Sparrow
by Just A Little Birdy
Summary: Clint Barton is SHIELD. Imogen Haylock is HYDRA. Not that such a small detail would ever stop Barton from turning his worst enemy into his best friend. (Post-CA:TWS, will hopefully run through AoU. No pairings.)
1. The Mission

**Disclaimer: I own nothing that's been in an actual movie.**

* * *

><p><strong>1: The Mission<strong>

"Haylock!"

The deep, commanding voice of her handler rang through the cold hallway, stopping Imogen in her tracks. Behind her, she could hear the moaning and coughing of the punk good-for-nothing kid she'd just dropped to the floor and the footsteps of the three people who'd caught her leaving him there. Two sets were quick and light, as much of a threat to her as a couple of feathers. The other steps were heavy, confident. Angry. And they would belong to the person who offered her the most trouble; Agent Donoghue, the man supposedly in charge of her.

Mouthing a curse, she turned abruptly to face the newcomers. "What's up, chief?" she asked, voice as cold and hard as the concrete walls around them.

"Don't play around, Haylock," he growled in response, towering over her and giving her that murderous sort of look that would have any other agent trembling in their boots. "What have I told you about starting fights?"

"He was asking for it."

"When you're involved, no one is asking for it."

They stood there, eye to eye, and silently fuming while the injured boy limped past them, arm thrown over the shoulders of a junior agent. "You'll pay for this," he spat at her as he passed. She spared him a look of absolute contempt, breaking the tension between her and Donoghue.

"Imogen," the handler said when the hall was empty. "You're off training."

She stared at him for a moment, stunned into silence, and then the anger returned, rushing through her like a wildfire and setting her ablaze. "You can't do that! I've barely done anything wrong! You can't kick me out for teaching some stupid kid a lesson!"

"That 'stupid kid' will be missing out on his first mission because of you!" Donoghue thundered. "And he's the third one this week alone! Three young agents, all more promising and easier to work with than you, who are now out of action for several weeks because you couldn't keep your temper!"

"It's not that bad," she returned sullenly. "They could just as easily have been injured in training."

The handler stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. His face was beet red now, like a cartoon man who was about to explode. "I want you to leave. You're out of control, and until you learn to stop throwing punches and to work with your team, I don't want to see you anywhere near them." She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off before she could begin with a sharp, "Quiet!" There was silence for a second as he watched her closely, making sure she wasn't going to start talking again, before he continued.

"It's not just that, Imogen. You're at the bottom of training, barely scraping past on every assessment you've ever had and unwilling to improve your performance. You're argumentative and stubborn, you refuse to follow orders, and you don't play well with anyone else – a vital skill for any agent. I've warned you time and time again that your place here is precarious, but you just don't seem to care enough to fix your attitude and learn to get along with people. There will be no more warnings. I want you off base by dusk. Go to another base, a safe house, a hotel down the road, I don't care; just get out of my sight and stay out of it until I tell you otherwise. Dismissed."

Angrily, she turned and stalked off, wispy blonde curls flying around her face. She didn't even reach the end of the corridor before the alarm went off, the phone in her pocket following it shortly with a loud buzz. She stopped to check the phone, glancing back at Donoghue as she dug the device out of her pocket; the handler was standing in the middle of the hallway looking confused, as if he wasn't sure what an alarm meant or what to do about it. She snorted in disgust. How had someone like him even become a senior agent and handler?

Unlocking it, she glanced down at the text she had just received, almost dropping her phone in surprise. From her brother Will, it was a simple message composed of just two words:

_HAIL HYDRA._

Her mind moved fast as she stuffed the phone back into her pocket and stole another glance at Donoghue. Which side was he on? Surely not HYDRA, not with that confused, stumbling appearance. In any case, it was probably best not to be caught in the same area as him, lest people get the wrong idea. She headed off in the same direction she had been going before, into the maze of halls and rooms that made up the SHIELD base. They were mostly empty down this end of the base, though as she drew closer to the living quarters and main control rooms of the facility she could hear fighting and shouting. The takeover was underway then.

She tried to skirt around the edges of the conflict, knowing it would be bloody and confusing and she could easily be made a target by accident. She didn't know any of the other sleepers here, not in the way her brother would were he based here – he had a knack for know which side was which. It was just another of the many things Imogen was useless at. No matter how she tried to avoid it, the fighting came to her, in the form of Donoghue himself, who apparently had jumped right into it as she had not. He was splattered in blood, his own or someone else's she couldn't tell, and came stumbling down the hall towards her clutching at his shoulder and reeling. At the sight of her, his eyes widened, and he gestured wildly with his one good hand towards the empty corridor behind her.

"Run, girl! Get out of here, before they kill you! Go, go!" He shouted empty words at her but she only moved back a single step, standing steady as two armed men came bearing down on them, one quickly pinning Donoghue and pressing a gun to his forehead. A moment later, the shot rang in the air, deafening in the enclosed space, and the handler's eyes glazed over, his body crumpling to the ground.

They turned to her, weapons fixed and a miss nearly impossible at such point blank range. "Which side?!" one called, voice cold and wary.

"HYDRA!" she returned before the entire question had even left his mouth. "HYDRA," she repeated, slower. "Hail HYDRA!"

They eyed her suspiciously. "Haylock," one said suddenly. "You're the Haylock girl, aren't you? Will Haylock's sister?"

"Yes," she answered, suddenly grateful for her brother's networking skills.

They relaxed, weapons falling away from her. "Hail HYDRA," they both responded, sounding weary. "Stay out of the fight, girl," one advised her. "You'll more likely get killed then anything, and young agents like you are the future of HYDRA." He nodded once in farewell and then both turned back towards their fight, leaving her alone with the body of her handler. For a moment, she gazed at his prone figure and staring eyes, trying to find an ounce of pity or remorse in her to spare for him, but she had felt no love for this man who had just minutes ago taken away the only life she knew and so could find not a single sorrow for him. Instead, she turned and left, happy enough to leave the fighting to the others this time, however much she loved a good fight. The soldiers had been right, she would do nothing but get herself killed out there, and besides, with HYDRA in control? It wouldn't be long at all now before she was moving on to bigger and better things.

* * *

><p>Bigger and better wasn't far away at all – that very afternoon, there was a tap at the door of her quarters. Imogen opened the door to find a nervous-looking young agent standing in the hallway beyond, shuffling his feet nervously. "What?" she asked in no uncertain terms, ready to shut the door in his face if he took too long in answering.<p>

He seemed to sense this, swallowing hard and scrambling for his given message. "Agent Ferson would like to see you in main control," he said hurriedly.

"I'll be there soon," she sighed, and with a tight nod, the boy turned and scurried away as fast as his short legs could carry him. She watched him go, wondering what on earth had made SHIELD or even HYDRA choose him for service, then grabbed a jacket and followed him, grimacing at the SHIELD logo on her shoulder. She'd have to get rid of the jacket, she supposed. A real shame; it was the most comfortable one she owned.

There were several people waiting for her at control, though only one was of immediate interest to her – Ferson, the guy that had apparently taken charge of the base until HYDRA appointed someone permanently. Imogen hadn't met him before but something about him was definitely familiar. She stored it away for later thought, focusing instead on the reason for their meeting.

"Agent Haylock?" Ferson asked, and she nodded. He cast a critical eye over her, frowning. There was a hint of malice in that eye, she noticed, like he had a score to settle. "Your brother has informed us that you are a member of HYDRA and trustworthy. Usually I wouldn't go just off the word of another agent, but given your brother's reputation and record…" He shrugged. "What's really important is this; what do you have to give to HYDRA's noble cause?"

For a moment, she was speechless, trying desperately to scrounge up a suitable answer. What skills did she have? She had never performed particularly well in training, nor made an effort to pay attention to anything but the few lessons that suited her…all she had going for her really was a red-hot temper that she couldn't control. For the first time that she could remember, she felt completely out of her depth. "I…can fight," she said slowly.

"Oh, believe me Miss Haylock, I know you can fight," Ferson said, cutting her off. "I've seen your victims – the one from this morning, for example." His eyes flashed dangerously, and suddenly she remembered why he seemed so familiar – he and the boy who had crossed her that morning were extraordinarily similar in looks and behaviour. Knowing her luck, she'd beaten up the younger brother of her new boss the very day he took over. Her stomach dropped at the thought, at the anger she could now see simmering just below his calm exterior.

"The problem is-" he began to pace then, wandering back and forth across the control room, "-you don't have a very impressive track record here or anywhere, and even your brother can't fix that for you. If I'm right, old Donoghue kicked you out of training just this morning – the only reason you're still here is because of the takeover. You're going to have to work to keep that place though, Haylock, because from where I stand you're a liability to any team we place you on and to the cause."

Imogen's mind moved fast. She had no other life besides HYDRA – she'd been raised in or close to bases all around the world, trained at the academy, been placed here to await her first missions. Her brother was a HYDRA agent, her parents had been sleepers in SHEILD. Hell, if she went far enough back in the family tree, she'd probably find relatives who were original HYDRA agents. Sure, she knew the outside world and how it worked, but this was the life she knew and was trained for. SHIELD had already thrown her away like useless garbage, and that had hurt, but HYDRA giving up on her as well? She wasn't sure what she would do with herself after that.

Mentally, she slapped herself, told herself to pull it together. He hadn't fired her yet. Resolve hardening, she had only one question to ask.

"What do I have to do?"

He smiled, but there was nothing friendly in the gesture. "We have a mark for you. SHIELD agent, gave us the slip initially and tried to make himself scarce but we've got a tracker on him. He's a danger to the entire operation, and needs to be taken out before he gets it in his head to start causing trouble."

"He sounds like a more skilled agent than someone fresh out the academy," she argued. "Why not send someone more experienced, or a whole team of people?"

"A whole team can be easily picked off from a distance. We need someone who can get in close and get him when his back is turned. That's your job. Pretend to be SHIELD, make friends with him. Buy him a drink. Whatever you like, as long as you're discreet."

She nodded slowly. It sounded easy enough. "Where is he now?"

"At a safe house a few miles from here. You'll want to move quickly – we think he's planning to move on in the next few days, and once you leave here you'll be on your own until our communications are back up."

"I'll be gone in ten minutes." She headed for the door, almost escaping the busy room before he called out again.

"You screw this up Haylock, and you're out."

She didn't answer, pulling the door shut firmly behind her and walking away.

* * *

><p>The house her mark had apparently gone to ground in was a large family home in a sleepy town several hours away from the base. It was late at night when she finally pulled into the street and parked a few houses down, and she was bone tired from the action of the day and the drive, wanting nothing more than to go in and get this over with, but she had to do this properly. She'd had no reason to listen to SHIELD, to follow their protocol and let their training turn her into a mindless soldier, but now that HYDRA was in charge, she would have to do this properly. Her own people wouldn't give her false information, and they would give her room to prove herself on her own – none of this team work ethic Donoghue had been inclined to.<p>

Properly would mean doing as Ferson had suggested, getting close to her target and tricking him into relaxing before striking. Easy enough, she supposed, though she was no great shakes at acting. _Just pretend to be on his side,_ Imogen reminded herself. _Easy._

Her phone buzzed loudly, her brother's name flashing up on the screen. Sighing, she brought the phone to her ear, greeting him with her usual deadbeat, "Hey."

"Imogen!" he crowed, altogether too cheerful for her tastes. "You made it through the day then?"

"Yeah," she said, eyes fixed on the house. A light shone through the cracks in a curtain, but there was no sign of movement there or anywhere else. As far as she could tell, the mark hadn't even noticed her arrival. She focused back in on the conversation at hand. "Some more warning would have been nice."

Will laughed. "I'll remember that for next time. I hear you were given a mission?"

"I've got to take out some SHIELD agent who gave us the slip. I'm outside his base now, actually."

"Should I be worried?"

"No. It's a pretty simple mission."

There was a long silence, and she knew immediately that he wasn't convinced. "Alright," he said eventually, the word slow and drawn-out. "Hey, I'll be down to your base in a week or two, see if I can get you moved over here with me, now that you're out of training and all that."

The thought of moving away from Ferson and her so-called 'team' actually made her smile. "That'd be good," she admitted, making him laugh again.

"I'll see what I can do." Faint voices filtered through the line from his end, and he was silent for a long moment as he listened to them. "Hey Immy, I've got to go," he said finally. "Good luck with the mission and all." The line clicked off and she dropped the now silent phone into her lap, studying the house once more. Nothing had moved since she had pulled up, everything just the way a quiet little town like this should be.

Finally, she grabbed her backpack and locked the vehicle she had borrowed from base for this assignment, slipping across and down the street to the house. The door was locked, predictably, but she was adept in lock-picking if nothing else. A flash of fear shot through her as the lock clicked, making her pause and take a deep breath, settling herself before entering the warm house.

Shutting the door, she turned to the rest of the house and stood quietly, listening. Three doors and a hallway led off from the small landing, the door of the front room she had seen lights in earlier standing ajar. She could see a TV inside, playing a movie or something and muttering quietly to whoever was watching it. Was that where her mark was? He didn't seem like much of an agent if he could be caught watching TV.

Softly, she dropped her backpack to the ground and crept towards the living room, peeking around the corner. She only caught a glimpse of the face of her company before pulling back, a knife hissing through the air just centimeters from her head. Flattening herself against the wall, she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm her racing heart and then gathered herself, shifting away from the dangerous doorway and back toward her bag, silently cursing Ferson. She didn't have a gun or anything, just one sharp knife for stabbing that was about as useful in this situation as a needle. She was pretty certain that his throwing skills were impressive – he was probably used to range weapons as a pose to close combat. Plus, Ferson had said something about him being more than capable of picking off a whole team of agents with relative ease.

Imogen didn't have much going for her in this fight. She felt her temper flaring at the very thought of being bested so easily and squashed it – this was too important to lose her cool over. However much she tried to kid herself, she was walking the thin line between life and death right now, and she didn't want to fall to the wrong side when her walk was done. Now wasn't the time for anger. Now was the time for play-acting and manipulation, no matter how outstandingly average she was in that particular field of espionage.

She took another deep breath, resolve hardening and courage finding itself again. "Hello?" she called experimentally, knowing her mark would hear her easily. There was silence; then, the groan of a couch and shuffling of feet. He wasn't keeping silent anymore. A moment later, the man appeared in the gloomy hallway, several years her senior but no doubt just as capable as any young agent. Fierce, storm-grey eyes met hers, testing her strength but she met him head on, not caring for the consequences.

"Who are you?" he demanded finally, their stare-off coming to a draw.

"SHIELD Agent Imogen Haylock," she replied, too lazy to be bothered with a false identity that she would have to keep up. Besides, there was nothing to connect her to HYDRA in any way – he could dig through SHIELD's file dump all he wanted, but all he would find was old records of fights and arguments that hadn't ended her way.

"And how do I know you're not just another HYDRA agent sent to kill me?" he asked, a note of amusement in his voice.

"I have nothing to do with them," she lied, pulling her face into a mask. "I just heard there was a safe house nearby and thought I might crash out here for a while." He still didn't look convinced, so she turned back to her bag, rummaging through the pockets for her SHIELD badge, handing it to him.

"This has no meaning anymore," he stated, tossing it back. He sounded bitter, she noticed – there was no doubt that he was a SHIELD agent.

"Would I have kept it if I was working with HYDRA?" she challenged. "I don't think a SHIELD badge would be welcome in that lot."

He went quiet, considering her argument. It wasn't strong, she knew, but it was better than nothing. Eventually, he sighed and relaxed a fraction. "You're kind of young," he said.

"You're kind of old," she shot back.

His counter was just as quick. "More experienced, don't you mean?"

"I mean what I say."

He laughed. "Alright kid, you can stay. One night only though." He jerked his thumb towards the hall. "Rooms are that way."

His comment irked her. She was twenty three, however young she looked. "I'm not a kid," she said, shouldering her pack and pushing past him. To her surprise, she couldn't stifle the satisfied grin that broke out across her face at the exchange. She might have finally met her match, someone she could go toe to toe with and still end on a good note, rather than yelling and anger and being kicked out of training.

The smile faded as she realised that soon she'd have to kill him.


	2. Kill

**2: Kill**

Imogen woke to the smell of bacon frying, the hissing and sputtering filtering through the wall between her and the kitchen, accompanied by the quiet murmur of a TV. Groaning, she rolled over and buried her face back into her pillow, not ready to face the day or the man she was supposed to get rid of, and soon. She had no idea how she was going to pull it off; she still knew next to nothing about him, save that he was about to kick her out and she was going to have to do something to convince him not to.

Of course, she could just slink away and forget about it all. Unfortunately that wasn't in her nature, and if she did she'd have HYDRA chasing after her day and night looking for revenge. It'd be worse than deserting from the army.

The smells of fresh breakfast persisted, until she could stand it no longer and forced herself to rise, dressing as slowly as she could. Her stomach growling, she chased the promise of bacon and coffee out into the kitchen, sliding into a seat along the breakfast bar. Clint stood on the other side, gulping down coffee like it was air. "Morning kid," he greeted her between swigs, offering her an easy grin.

"Not a kid," she reminded him, helping herself to the bacon and eggs already heaped onto a plate for her. His own plate sat next to the coffee pot, a great deal more breakfast left than there was coffee. It wasn't hard to see where his priorities were.

"Sure." His reply was nonchalant and easy-going, and just a little bit annoying.

"You know, you never told me your name," she said between mouthfuls, looking for a new subject.

His easy, joking grin disappeared, turning guarded and just a little uncomfortable as he weighed his options. "Clint," he said finally.

"That's it?" she asked. "Just Clint?"

He nodded. "That's all you need to know."

"Right."

They fell silent. Imogen took the chance to focus in on the TV perched up on top of the fridge, showing one of those typical morning talk shows that usually could never catch her attention for more than a few seconds. This morning was different. They were in the middle of a segment about SHIELD, showing footage of three helicarriers firing on each other and crashing into what she recognised as the Triskellion. She'd totally missed it the day before, but she had a hunch that it had something to do with the rise of HYDRA. Both organisations had fallen apart, she learnt now. Pockets of SHIELD and HYDRA both were scattered all over the globe, covers and networks blown.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, just once, indicating a text. She pulled it out with her free hand and opened up her messages. _Who's your mark?_ It was Will, getting just a little too far into her business as usual. She dismissed it, tucking the phone back into her pocket and resolving to deal with it later. Feeling eyes on her, she looked up and found herself caught in the stormy grey gaze of Clint, unable to look away. His level, calculating gaze was enough to make her feel nervous – could he see right through her, to the imposter beyond?

"You still look to young to be in this business," he said finally, looking away a moment and releasing her.

"I'm twenty three," she pointed out, not one to beat around the bush. "That's old enough."

"Still pretty young."

"Yeah well, I'm good at what I do."

"What clearance level?"

She hesitated. None, was really the answer. Technically, she wasn't even an agent – never even been given a chance out on a mission. "Three," she lied. Her phone buzzed again, muffled by her pocket.

"Get out in the field much?" he asked.

"No." Text message number three. "I'm mostly on extraction." Four. Silence fell over the kitchen for a minute. "So I guess you want me to leave soon," she said finally, remembering his deal the night before.

Clint hesitated, looking like he might just be reconsidering. "It's for the best," he replied, face falling into a frown. "Safer for you. And for me. Sorry kid."

Her phone was ringing now. Sighing heavily, she gave in and answered, walking back to her room to escape Clint's curious eyes and listening ears. "What?" she asked harshly.

"Imogen, who is your mark?" Will's voice was desperate and insistent, like he was on the edge of panicking. It irked her – she could take care of herself, and he knew it.

"I don't know," she said, dropping her voice so that there would be no chance of being overheard. "Just some guy. Said his name's Clint."

A string of curses filtered through from the other end, surprising her. It didn't sound like her brother at all. "Immy, get out of there," he said gravely. "Get out and wait for me." She could feel anger swelling in her gut as he spoke, getting more and more vicious.

"What?!" she hissed down the line. "Why? I can't believe you. I can do this without you, Will."

"No you can't," he insisted. Her free hand clenched into a fist at her side. "This is a suicide mission, Imogen. That guy is _Hawkeye._ You go after him, you might as well just shoot yourself now." She stayed silent, barely believing him. She'd heard of Hawkeye, of course. Who hadn't? These days, all anyone talked about was the Avengers and the whole New York incident. The idea of facing someone like Hawkeye was daunting, but the guy in her kitchen? Surely Will was mistaken. There was nothing intimidating about a man who chugged coffee and let strange people into his safe house.

"Imogen?"

"Yeah," she said, taking a deep breath in an effort to stay calm. "Yeah, I'm here."

"I'm coming to help you. Just-just get _out_, okay?"

For a moment, she was sorely tempted to listen to him, _just in case_. But then she remembered just what she was here to prove, remembered Ferson's sneering face giving her this mission. If she left this house and waited for Will, who as far as she knew was halfway across the country…she'd lose every advantage she had. "Alright," she lied. She heard his sigh of relief.

"Thankyou. I'll be there soon."

"Okay."

"Bye." And the line went dead. Imogen dropped her phone on her bed, following it a minute later and staring at the ceiling light. It was pretty dingy, fogged over and yellowed with age, giving out a warm glow that just barely lit up the room. Honestly, she wasn't entirely convinced that it was giving out more light than the gaps in the heavy curtains.

"Bad call?"

Groaning, she pulled herself up into a sitting position, eyeing Clint. He stood in the doorway, arms crossed and leaning on the wall as if nothing could ever bother him. She shrugged.

"Just my brother," she replied carefully.

"What did he want?"

"To know that I'm safe." She rolled her eyes. "He worries too much."

"Maybe you should meet up with him somewhere."

"Yeah, maybe," she mumbled, her brain still working overtime. "I was thinking; I'll leave tonight, after it gets dark. It'll be easier to leave without being seen." That would buy her a little time, at least.

He offered her a nod, and then disappeared again. He was stiff, she noticed as he left. On guard. Not as trusting as he could be, but his guard had slipped enough to let her in.

Now she just had to kill him.

* * *

><p>There was a gun on the coffee table.<p>

It had been there all day, sitting in front of her, mocking her. Imogen wasn't really sure _why _there was a gun on the coffee table, but she assumed it had something to do with Clint. Superhero not-so-secret identity aside, he was far from the most organised person she'd ever met – she'd call him scatterbrained if she didn't know better. If she hadn't seen footage of him in action in New York, when he'd been fighting aliens (if that was even him – she still wasn't completely convinced that Will was right about him).

It occurred to her that that should have been enough of a reason to convince her to drop this stupid plan, but all it did was tighten the nasty knot that had squeezed and pushed its way into her stomach uninvited. Besides, running away now would be stupid. She was in the perfect position to take out her target, who also happened to trust her (even if that trust didn't extend much further than the distance he could throw her) and wasn't expecting any of what was coming his way (well, he was, but not from her). Any other agent would take the chance, and they'd be praised for it when they returned.

All she really wanted was a bit of that praise. Just enough to prove she wasn't a complete screw-up.

The knot tightened.

Steeling herself and pushing away what she guessed was just nerves (it was her first mission, after all, her first kill), Imogen set down the phone and picked up the weapon instead. It was already loaded, just waiting for someone to aim and fire, and fit comfortably into her hand. She'd done this a hundred times in the firing range, training for this one moment, but she couldn't stop her hands from shaking as she flicked the safety and rose from the couch, creeping out and down the hall. Clint's voice sounded from the kitchen, muttering into his phone; he'd been covertly trying to get a call through all day, she knew. She paused again at the very edge of the shadows, peering into the kitchen, then taking aim at his exposed back. It was an easy shot; Clint was out in the open, at close range, and completely distracted…yet as she pulled the trigger, she already knew that she'd missed. True enough, the bullet flew straight past him and buried itself in the wall instead, offset by shaking hands that she hadn't been able to steady. Clint dropped immediately, phone conversation forgotten in the face of a more immediate danger, and she cursed herself silently. Without that shot, this mission was about to become a whole lot harder.

"Imogen?" his voice called out from behind the kitchen bench.

"Clint." Her hands were shaking again, her voice barely kept even. Not good. What was this feeling of unease that was throwing her off? Missions like this were the whole reason she was in training – if she couldn't handle this one, how could she handle any in the future?

"What are you doing?" He was confused, that much she could tell. Confused, and perhaps slightly hurt.

"Following orders." Her voice became cold and icy as she spoke, in an attempt to keep herself together.

"Whose orders?" The room fell quiet for a few seconds. "HYDRA's?"

"You don't understand Clint." And there it was, that slight wobble in her voice, a testament to her fraying nerves.

"No, I don't." She could hear it in his voice now, that note of betrayal and hurt, feeding the knot in her stomach and making it tighter. "You want to explain it to me?" His head showed above the bench, and she fired before she could stop herself, bullet biting into the counter-top as he ducked back down again.

"It's complicated." There was a beat, and then, to her amazement, he stepped out into the open – was he stupid? – facing the gun without any protection to speak of. She didn't fire though, not immediately, eyeing him just as he did her.

"You don't have to do this Imogen," he told her, eyes on the gun.

"Yes, I do," she replied, more for her own benefit than his. "I'm sorry Clint, but I have to." He moved then, faster than she could, suddenly up in her face and twisting the gun out of her hand before she could aim or fire. He threw it to the side; it skittered away across the kitchen floor, coming to rest well out of reach. Forgetting the gun, she jumped into action, throwing a fist in towards his stomach. He moved out of the way, the hit just glancing off his ribcage, and she turned with him, employing all of her training just to keep up. Clint fought her off easily, was hardly trying, making her more and more frustrated until her defense became sloppy and her attacks vicious and random.

His chance came easily after that, and in one flowing move, he tripped and pinned her to the ground. "Stop," he told her firmly, voice filled with more authority than most of her trainers. She'd never listened in the academy though, and she wouldn't listen now, pulling one arm free and snatching up the gun again, pressing it to his forehead.

"Are you really going to pull that trigger?" he asked calmly, looking her right in the eye and refusing to let her turn away.

"That's the idea," she replied through clenched teeth.

"I don't think you will."

"Yeah? Why not?"

He cracked just the slightest of smiles, not at all phased by the gun at his head. "You don't really seem like the type to follow orders for no good reason." She froze, his words repeating themselves in her head. He was right; she didn't follow orders. Not unless it was in her best interests.

This was in her best interests. She'd kill him, and Ferson would be forced to give her missions, to treat her like any other agent under his command. Maybe even to let her join Will and his team. "I have a good enough reason," she said finally.

"A reason to kill a man in cold blood?" He looked her right in the eye, unblinking. "Well whatever it is, I hope it's good enough to let you sleep at night."

She froze again, hand shaking as she struggled to keep the gun steady. Seeing his chance, Clint grabbed the gun again, shoving it away from his face just before her finger squeezed the trigger one last time, the bullet burying itself in the wall behind him. Barely blinking, he ripped the weapon out of her hand and threw it out of reach again, blocking her swing at his head with his other hand. "Sorry about this," he muttered, confusing her for a moment before he delivered one final, solid knock to her own head, making her dazed and dizzy, drifting away into unconsciousness.


	3. For And Against

**3: For And Against**

When Imogen woke again, she was slumped in a kitchen chair, hands tied behind her back. Her head pounded with a splitting headache that didn't seem like it was moving any time soon, her muscles stiff and sore. Groaning, she lifted her head and blinked several times to clear the spots from her vision, trying to remember just why she was there.

Her eyes fell on Clint, sitting across the room watching her, and the gun, now lain neatly on the bench beside him. "What's going on?" she asked, shifting in her seat and testing the tape that held her wrists captive. It didn't budge. With a jolt, she remembered the fight – her hands shaking, the bullets missing, Clint knocking the gun away. Something heavy hitting her in the head.

"Well, for one thing, you're not trying to kill me," Clint answered lazily. "Which I'd say is a major improvement on our last conversation."

"_Major improvement?_" she returned incredulously, glaring daggers at him. She'd always been a hothead, especially with a headache. "I'm tied to a chair!"

"Exactly." He sounded _bored, _unaffected by her outburst. "Much better for both of us." There was an icy edge in his voice, one that she hadn't heard from him at all in the last two days. He'd been watchful, sure; distrusting, yes, but never cold. It cut like a knife. He'd been so easy to talk to, easy to get along with, and now he was angry and aloof. She took a deep breath. It was her own fault anyway.

Down the hall, her ringtone blared loudly. She jumped at the sudden noise, eyes snapping from Clint to the hall behind him. "What's that?" he demanded, angry eyes turning to her.

"That's my brother," she shot back easily. "Calling to see why I haven't checked in yet." Conveniently, she forgot the part about supposedly being several miles away from this house and the chair she was tied to. Giving her a look, Clint disappeared down the hall, returning a moment later with the ringing phone and a laptop, settling himself at the bench for a time. The phone went unanswered, eventually falling silent. Clint moved on from watching her to a casual disregard, ignoring the phone when it rang for the second and third times, keeping his eyes steadily on the screen in front of him.

About an hour in, she shifted in her chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. He glanced at her, made sure she was still stuck fast and not going anywhere, then went back to his business.

The hours stretched on.

They put Imogen on edge – she was bored and restless, muscles crying for relief. She'd pulled against the tape almost constantly during the hours she'd sat there, but Clint was good at what he did. It wasn't budging. The phone kept ringing as well, at least fifteen times over the course of the day, until she found herself gritting her teeth every time the ringtone began. If she ever got out of this, she decided at about the ninth call, she was changing her ringtone. It was driving her crazy.

With the sun going down outside the window and the silence growing more malevolent by the second, she was fed up. Shifting uncomfortably and huffing a frustrated sigh for the thousandth time that day, she searched for a way to push him into action, to make him do _something _other than sit there and ignore her. She wouldn't even mind if he knocked her out again; anything for a bit of relief. "Are you going to kill me soon?" she asked finally, voice dripping with a venom she just couldn't contain. "This is really boring."

"Actually, I thought I might just leave you there for a while," he replied lightly, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. She scowled.

"_Why_?" she asked, not so much interested in his reasons as wanting to keep him talking to distract herself from the fact that she'd been _tied_ to a _chair_ for almost an _entire day. _"What does that even achieve?"

For the first time in hours, Clint actually turned and looked at her. "Thought it might teach you a lesson actually," he said rubbing the back of his neck and stretching. "About patience or something."

"It's not working," she informed him in the driest voice she could muster.

He raised an eyebrow. "I noticed."

"Any other wisdom you wanna hand over?"

"Don't trust HYDRA." He was suddenly completely serious. "I don't know how they got you to join, or why you took their offer, but they're nothing but bad news."

"HYDRA aren't the ones taping me to chairs," she reminded him. And suddenly he was laughing again.

"No, they're the ones sending you out after the best sniper in the world."

She snorted. "If you're so good, why don't you just shoot me already?"

Imogen was pushing her luck, and she knew it. He didn't seemed flustered at all though, just thoughtful, going over something in his mind that looked like it might have been eating at him for years. "Redemption," he said finally.

She frowned heavily. "Redemption?"

He nodded firmly. "Redemption."

"What about it?" Frustration crept into her voice.

"Do you really follow HYDRA's ideals?" he asked with a frown. "You think it's okay to kill people who haven't even committed the crime they're being persecuted for?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

He laughed. "So you're just a blind follower? Didn't take you for someone who wouldn't ask questions."

She scoffed. "You don't even know me," she spat back, squirming for a second. Her binds held tight.

"I know enough." His relaxed confidence annoyed her, a scowl crossing her face as she settled back into her seat and became aware once again of her aching muscles. He leaned forward, looking her right in the eye. It was almost as uncomfortable as the chair. "I know that you're not a killer. You didn't shoot me, even though you had plenty of opportunities. I know that you're angry, because you know that you were sent here to die, you just haven't accepted it yet."

She rolled her eyes away, staring at the darkening kitchen, at the ceiling, at her hands and the tape holding them; anything to escape his eyes. "It's a bit late for regret," she said, her voice louder and angrier than she expected.

He sighed. "I don't want to kill you," he admitted, leaning back in his seat. "Whatever your reasons for joining HYDRA, I don't think that you've done anything to deserve that. So I'll give you a choice." A half-smile came over his face, morbid amusement dancing in his eyes. "Choose a side."

Imogen's eyes snapped back to him instantly. "What?"

"SHIELD or HYDRA. Pick one."

Her mind raced. She'd never been good at choices – she tended to just do whatever came to mind first, and suffered the consequences later. Usually, her first move was to attack blindly. It didn't work out for her much, but she kept on doing it.

Not an option now. Move on.

Her next thought was to side with HYDRA, like she'd been taught to as long as she could remember. Even before she had joined SHIELD, she had been HYDRA. As a child, she'd known more about the makeup of SHIELD than any true SHIELD agent ever would, because she'd known about HYDRA. But as she opened her mouth to spit HYDRA's name in his face, she stopped herself. There was something in the back of her mind, a niggling seed of doubt that stopped her from making her choice. She'd been sent here to die. Just like, as far as Clint was concerned, other people would be sent to die for nothing.

Was she really sure she wanted to serve HYDRA?

But SHIELD weren't any better.

Did she want to be on any side at all?

She was in too deep to get out, she knew. As soon as the thought came to her mind she discarded it – if she left HYDRA, she'd be hunted for the (assuredly short) rest of her life. Any smart agent would claim SHIELD, and betray him later (if there was a later – who knew where he intended to take this), but she sensed this was a challenge to her loyalties, her beliefs, and she never could bring herself to back down from a challenge.

There was a crash somewhere in the house, providing her with blessed relief from her impending choice. Clint shot up, turning in the direction of the front door. Without a sound, he ghosted to the front of the kitchen, pressing himself up against the wall there and peering around the corner into the hall. Imogen could see straight down it from where she was sitting, just enough to spot the dark shapes of two men creeping down the hall towards the kitchen. A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye told her there were more outside, moving past the window.

In the half-light, she could see Clint mouthing what she expected were swear words. He glanced at the gun sitting on the bench, then at the door beside him. He'd have to expose himself to get to it. A small shake of the head, a glance at her, and then he took off down the second hallway and into the bathroom, the only room in the house without windows.

For a moment, she wondered what he was hoping to achieve by barricading himself into a bathroom, but then the two men (one of which actually turned out to be a woman) from the hallway burst into the room, swinging guns around and taking in the scene. Finally, the man lowered his gun and fixed his eyes on her, and she recognized the face of Will, looking relieved as he put away the gun and started pulling at the duct tape expertly holding her to the chair.

"I thought I told you to get out of here," he muttered as he worked.

With a bit of difficulty, she shrugged. "He didn't look dangerous," she said.

"He could have _killed _you," Will said, gritting his teeth. "In fact, from the look of it he was about to."

_No he wasn't._ A voice whispered the treacherous thought in the back of her mind.

_Yes, he was,_ she told it firmly, pushing it aside. The last of the tape fell away and she moved and stretched for the first time all day, relishing the sweet feeling of relief and fresh blood pumping into her muscles.

"Where is he?" Will asked. She gestured to the bathroom door, and the woman who had followed him in was there in a flash, setting to the task of opening it. Imogen turned back to Will and his frown.

"Look, I'm fine," she insisted. "I had to try. At least now I have a _chance_. You know Ferson wouldn't have given me a chance if I'd just run away. He has just as much power to kill me as this guy."

Yelling and the sound of gunshots from outside pulled their attention. Will raced outside, pulling his gun out again and joining the fray. Imogen was slower. There was a small team of HYDRA agents clustered around the house, ten or so as far as she could tell. All of them had guns pointed at the roof. She stumbled across the lawn to join them, looked up – and saw Clint, glancing down at the group in general before setting his eyes on a tree growing particularly close to the edge of the roof and jumping into its branches. The sound of guns firing filled the air, making her ears ring, but it didn't deter him. Before anyone knew it, he'd made it to the branches of a tree in the yard next door, and then to the ground and out of sight behind a high fence.

The night fell silent and suddenly uneventful. Will turned to the rest of his team, barking out a few orders, then grabbed Imogen's arm and steered her back into the kitchen, sitting her down at the bench. "What are you doing?" she asked as he forced her into the chair.

He gave her a stern look, pointing at her chair. "Stay there." And then he disappeared into the house, making a lot more noise than he originally had. She could hear him in her room next door, and then the bathroom Clint _hadn't _used as an escape route, and then the second bedroom. The most noise came then, as he went through something.

He returned with a bow and a quiver of arrows, among other things, dropping them on the bench in front of her. "See," he said, faintly triumphant. "Hawkeye. An Avenger. You should have gotten out while you still could."

"Like you could have done any better," she scoffed. It was the best she had when faced with the unusual weapon. Reaching out, she ran her fingers over the arms of the bow, remembering what Clint had been saying to her before. _Pick a side,_ he'd said. _I don't want to kill you._

_Redemption._

It hit her like a train, her hand snapping back to her lap. Had that been her choice? The way she'd chosen all those years ago, before it was even real, or a second chance with SHIELD? She felt stupid for not realising it before, for letting anger swirl through her system and cloud her mind. Even more, she felt stupid for the things she had been thinking at the time, the things she had been considering. Had she really begun doubting HYDRA? She remembered considering getting out, knowing how futile it would be. She knew that without doubt. Why had she even considered it?

"Imogen?" Will asked with a frown. She shook herself and stood, grabbing the bow and quiver full of arrows.

"Let's go," she said determinedly, pushing towards the front door without waiting for his answer. This was her choice, the path that Will had kept her on whenever she had strayed because he wholeheartedly believed that it was the right one. The one that her parents had followed, the one they had died for.

Any path her whole family followed had to be the right one. Right?


	4. The Doubt

**A/N: Thanks to the 13 people following this story, and my three reviewers - every notification in my email makes my day a little brighter. Also a shout-out to PatronSaintofGermany for keeping me straight and listening to me lose my mind over the end of this chapter; it would still be sitting quietly in a dark corner if you hadn't saved it xD Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>4: Doubt<strong>

The room was grey.

So far as she'd seen, the whole base was grey, from floor to ceiling. It hadn't been a particularly important base, so no one had bothered giving it any kind of colour. Even the clothes they'd given her were grey. The only colour she'd seen in the whole base was the HYDRA logo someone had painted over SHIELD's eagle near mission control. It had still been drying as she walked past, paint looking like blood in the harsh light of the hallway. Drops of paint had rolled down the wall from the skull and tentacles to pool on the floor below; like the eagle was bleeding, she'd thought in passing, an involuntary shiver running down her spine.

This place, the HYDRA base where Will lived, was little more than an oversized bunker, built for functionality over comfort. Most everyone who walked down its halls was suited up and carrying an array of weapons, on their way to and from missions. There were no offices here, no places to relax after a hard training session or a long stint in the field. There was debrief and mission control and training and really not much else.

Imogen had been given a quick tour. Command, gun range, weapons storage, mess hall, living quarters. They'd directed her to a room and told her on no uncertain terms to stay put. Impressively, she'd listened, and as a result had wasted away hours upon hours just lying on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. In the first few hours, she'd drifted in and out of sleep, but sleep was long gone now and instead she lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling and rolling the same three words over and over in her head.

_SHIELD or HYDRA?_

It bugged her that the question was still there, looming, unanswered. That Will had interrupted before she'd had time to choose. That she hadn't had the guts to lift up her chin and proudly tell him that HYDRA was her choice, her world, her backbone. Most of all, it bugged her that it bugged her. Anyone else would just let it go, move on, leave him for the wolves of HYDRA to feast on (this whole base was focused on the death of Clint Barton, so far as she knew. He wouldn't be alive long). But here she was, comatose, as he wound his way into her head and set up camp, making her question her every loyalty.

She needed to get _out._

As soon as the temptation found her, Imogen couldn't lie still any longer. It was a miracle she had lasted this long at all; patience was a virtue flung far out of reach of her mind. With a deep sigh, she sat up, and then stood, stretching out muscles that were still aching from their abuse the day before. It was a satisfying feeling. She slipped through the door like a wraith, though there was no one outside to sneak past, making it all too easy to wind her way through to a main thoroughfare and blend into the small crowd walking back and forth.

Where to go? To Will? She didn't know or recognise anyone else on this base, nor did she want to. Anyone who knew her would screw up their nose and move quickly in the other direction. People found her repulsive like that; no one had ever really taken a shine to her (her parents were a possible exception, but she had no memories to compare). She'd been born to turn people away.

She shook her head, just a little. To Will, then.

Her brother was in the mess hall, surrounded by the small team he'd led against Clint. As soon as he saw her, he excused her and crossed the room to meet her in the middle, pulling her over to the wall, out of the main thoroughfare. "What are you doing, Imogen?" he asked with a frown.

She shrugged. "I'm bored, Will. I can't sit in that room all day; you know that."

"You're just going to have to," he said with a sigh.

"Why?"

"We've all got things to do, Imogen. Besides, I haven't even talked to the commander about you being here; technically, you're still under Ferson's command."

"Go and talk to him then. I can _help _you."

He shook his head. "You can help me by staying out of the way."

Frustrated, she gritted her teeth and balled her hands up into fists, nails pressing painfully into her palms. "Fine," she replied finally, not bothering to hide her displeasure. She turned to leave but didn't quite escape before Will caught her shoulder, turning her back to him. "What?"

He pressed a keycard into her hand. "My room's just down the hall from yours. Go and find something to do; read a book, play a game, I don't care as long as you stay put."

Taking the card, she threw him another filthy look and escaped the mess hall as fast as she could. Fuming quietly, she let her feet carry her back to the living quarters of the base without really thinking about it, finding her way to Will's room. It was identical to hers – same bed, same desk, same endless grey. Will had more possessions than she did though; a neat stack of books on the desk, a bar of chocolate, clothes scattered here and there.

It was the grey laptop on his bed that caught her attention though.

Shoving the keycard in her pocket, she flopped down onto the bed and opened the computer. The screen blinked on, asking her for a password, and without pause she tapped in the ID number from his keycard, unlocking the device. It was the password he used for everything, she knew, which also happened to be the reason she'd memorised the sequence of letters and numbers unique to her brother. You never knew when access to a higher clearance level could come in handy (even if that access was limited – SHIELD wasn't much of a fan of passwords these days).

The laptop opened to one of the standard programs installed by SHIELD, a system that monitored news feeds and media from all over the world for whatever it was you wanted information on. Currently, Will had it searching for information on SHIELD and HYDRA, and the results were pouring in. The whole thing with the helicarriers in DC had gone viral the minute someone noticed it was happening, and the file dump had followed soon after. The whole world was talking about it, and with good reason. She threw a precursory glance over the latest feeds, intending to shut the program down, but one caught her eye and she stopped. She picked it from the crowd, enlarging it. Grainy, unprofessional footage of a highway shooting started playing – the imposing form of Captain America was easy to pick out, the bright shield on his arm setting him apart from his companions. That wasn't what had caught her attention though – no, she was interested in the captain's opponent, the one whose left arm was fully exposed and glinted a bright metallic colour in the sun, only better highlighting the deep red star residing on his shoulder. There wasn't much footage of him, compared to what was shown of the captain and his allies. Someone didn't want this guy seen.

HYDRA? Probably. Curiousity piqued, she minimised the program and opened another one, finding her way into several fragmented copies of the file dump within minutes. HYDRA was doing its best to pull all the information back under cover, but they had acted too slowly; there was at least one copy of everything to be found somewhere, and if there was one thing she excelled at, it was finding what she wanted. It was a skill she'd honed through years of lies, bullying, and burning curiousity over withheld information, until it was something to be proud of, even if no one would let her use it for anything useful.

Even with her considerable skill and stockpile of leaked files, there was precious little information on Captain America's new nemesis. What she could find was hidden under layers and layers of useless SHIELD information and protocol, piggybacked onto the system in places where no one would think to look for it. A few mission reports, health evaluations, some other documents that made little sense to her, most of them written in languages that were definitely not English, though she had no idea further than that. She wasn't a linguist. There was a name though, a name that was consistent with each report. The Winter Soldier.

She kept digging, but little else appeared.

Eventually, she turned back to what she'd already found. There was a mention of cryogenics, a reference to another report. That file was SHIELD property, easy to find compared to the HYDRA files. She only skimmed it, not in the mood to decipher the scientific jargon that filled the report. The name at the bottom would be the most interesting part of the paper anyway. A name could be traced to an employee record and to further reports.

Any plans on digging for more information on the soldier fell from her mind at the name though, thoughts turning to other things. _Kathleen Haylock_ was typed out at the bottom, marking the report as one her mother had written. Imogen shoved the laptop away from her for a moment, sucking in a deep breath. Really, she should have expected something like this. She knew her mother worked for HYDRA, knew she'd had an interest in cryogenics and done a lot of research on the subject. Somewhere in SHIELD's archives there was a whole box dedicated to her theories. But she'd never actually _carried out_ any of her research, not for SHIELD anyway.

_Now _she was curious.

Sending a copy of the cryo report to her phone for later reference, she closed it and went searching for anything related to her mother. A SHIELD employee file came up, but didn't tell her much, as well as several mission and injury reports and a few more reports on a cryogenics project SHEILD didn't know she'd worked on.

There was a picture in one – a man, frozen. Imogen shivered and clicked away from the report as fast as she could, trying not to think about her mother experimenting on people. It was a lot to swallow.

Right at the very bottom, there was a mission report that wasn't marked by SHIELD and until recently had been heavily encrypted – HYDRA. It didn't even look like a report really; it lacked the formality and utter disinterest of any other paperwork she'd ever encountered.

_Targets: Agent Michael Haylock; Agent Kathleen Haylock._

_Mission successful._

She sucked in a breath, staring at the screen, confused. Her parents shouldn't be listed as HYDRA targets. They'd been killed by enemies of SHIELD looking for retribution, not HYDRA. Or at least, that's what Will had told her.

He wouldn't lie to her. Not about this. He knew how much it meant to her, how everything that happened to her, everything she did, had revolved around their deaths.

She read on. Slowly, she began to doubt her faith in Will.

Written at the bottom of the report: _Agent Cassandra Brady to continue surveillance of Item 548._

The name started a fire in her that was unlike any other. She hated that woman. Cassandra Brady, the woman (and apparently also HYDRA agent) who had adopted both Haylock children when their parents died, had taken everything they had and given them nothing in return. She'd been hard and uncompromising, angry when Imogen got into fights and arguments at school and ignorant of anything either child did the rest of the time. When Will joined SHIELD before he'd even finished school, she didn't even seem to notice. And then, she'd barely lasted three years of waiting for Imogen to leave before disappearing entirely just before her fifteenth birthday.

She'd joined HYDRA for that birthday. It was her only choice.

The thought of that woman being on the same side as her parents – as _her_ – repulsed her. The fact that Brady had been involved in her parent's deaths only made her angrier. And Item 548 confused her. It was something that her parents had been in possession of, that much was apparent, but she had no idea _what_ exactly. Everything the family had owned was claimed and either sold or trashed by that woman. If two children couldn't escape that fate (and she might as well have thrown them out with all the family photos, because Imogen was certain nothing was the same as it could have been), then how could any random item?

So Cassandra Brady had lied to her every day for the ten years she'd acted as 'mother'. She was not the next door neighbour, not her old babysitter from the days when she had a family, but a HYDRA agent, involved in the assassination of the people she had dared to call friends and then sent to watch over their children and whatever Item 548 was.

Within the next twenty minutes, Imogen found numerous missions completed by a younger Agent Brady, and just one by the woman as Imogen had known her. Item 548 came up again. So did Brady's death.

She couldn't say she felt anything but hate.

There was something still bothering her about the file on her parent's death. Trawling through the mess of files, she pulled up Will's. Immediately, a note on an ongoing mission caught her attention, bringing her to mission details.

It was simple.

_Protect Item 548._

The mission dated back _years_; he'd had it before she'd even joined SHIELD. She couldn't, in all those years, ever remember him mentioning it though, not once in the hundreds of times she'd asked him if he had anything from their parents. But this mission, this item being passed down from her parents, to Brady, to Will, this said differently.

He'd been lying, she realised suddenly. For as long as she could remember, someone had been lying to her; first Brady, and then Will. There was no doubt about it. She couldn't tell herself anything different, not unless she wanted to be a liar as well. The seed of doubt in her mind bloomed like a rose in the spring. If he'd lied about this, who knew what else he'd kept from her. Maybe everything was a lie. Maybe he'd never said a true thing in his life.

And why had he lied to her? Because HYDRA had told him to, probably. They liked to lie, she'd discovered as she read, just like SHIELD had.

She was so _sick _of it. All her life, she'd followed lie after lie after lie, built herself around beliefs that were just someone's idea of a joke. She wanted to scream and rage and break something.

She sat. Silent.

Her thoughts drifted back to Barton. Back to the things he'd said. _I don't want to kill you._

_You were sent here to die, you just haven't accepted it yet._

_SHIELD or HYDRA?_

Her fingers found the card in her pocket, a key to the rest of the base. She knew what to do now. Abandoning the laptop and the room, she entered the concrete maze that was the base, striding with a confidence she didn't really have. No one questioned her. They barely even looked at her, all too confident themselves. The hall leading to the archives was completely deserted. No one here was interested in paperwork and artifacts, apparently; not that there would be anything very interesting kept here.

She found it dumped on a shelf right in the very back, amid a myriad of other seized weapons that no one knew how to use. They probably didn't work anyway, probably never had a chance to; created by some half-baked evil scientist in the back of his garage. The bow didn't look right, thrown uncaringly on top of a pile of science experiments gone wrong – it was too sleek, too dark, like it belonged to another world. The quiver was there too, and she snatched up both, bundling them up in a blanket she'd borrowed from Will's room.

Her trip back to her room lacked the confidence she'd feigned earlier – she tried, but her heart was beating in double time and her steps quickened to match. Every time she passed someone it leapt into her throat, then fell back into her chest with a dull thud. Surely they could hear it. No one stopped her though.

The door clicked shut behind her and she breathed sigh of relief, slumping against it, her prize in her arms. After a moment, she forced herself to move, stashing it in a corner of the wardrobe and knocking over a stack of SHIELD-issue clothing to cover it. Just as she finished, there was a knock at the door; she checked once more that the bow was out of sight and then answered it.

It was Will, of course. No one else would have any reason to knock on her door. "I need my key back," he said, holding out his hand.

She dug the card out of her pocket and handed it to him. "Thanks," she muttered, not really paying attention to what she was saying.

He frowned. "Are you okay?" he asked, stopping her from closing the door with one hand.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just said thanks. Since when do you have manners?"

"Funny," she snapped, shoving the door closed. For a moment, she waited, expecting him to force his way back in and demand to know why she was acting weird, only relaxing when she heard his footsteps walking away.

She slumped onto her bed, staring at her hands. She had to find a way out, and soon.


	5. To Find An Archer

**A/N: Wow, thanks so much for your reviews and favs and follows; I was so surprised at how many there were when the last chapter went up :D In other news, I somehow managed to write an edit a whole chapter in two days which is unheard of for me xD This is almost a bit of a filler chapter, but needs to happen, and the next chapter will be infinitely more interesting and actually have some hawkeye I promise.**

**Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>5: To Find An Archer<strong>

The thing about small bases was that they tended to run on a cycle that wasn't unlike the regular, nine-to-five business hours, except that no one actually left the building at the end of the day. During the day, the halls were a hive of activity, people going in every direction. When night fell – well, you could almost mistake the place for deserted. Lights were dimmed, agents went to sleep, and guards took up their rotations. There were always a few people in mission control, of course, but they were only there to monitor any action, as very few high-level ops ran from here.

Imogen knew the cycle well. She'd lived on a base just a little bigger than this for a good two years now. No matter how many night ops people went on, they always fell back into the same routine of rising and retiring with the sun. So, once the clock hit midnight and the base was as quiet as it would get, Imogen left her room, closing the door as softly as she could behind her and creeping away down the hall, holding her jacket close as tightly as she could. The bow and quiver were an unfamiliar weight on her back, hidden as best she could under her jacket – hopefully, the darkness would take care of the rest. She'd left her hair loose too, falling down her back in soft waves to help hide the bulk of the weapons.

If someone did notice them, there was a gun at her side, and she had a mean left hook.

The halls were deserted, letting her pass through the base like a ghost, unseen. Every room was dark, except for the empty mess hall and mission control, where a handful of people sat hunched over bright screens and mission files, their attention far away from the woman creeping past outside.

The staircase was the problem. As one of only two ways out of the bunker, there was always someone watching over it. During the day, they'd been placed above ground, in the small building that acted as a disguise for the operations below, but now there was a woman at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the wall and looking bored. It was immediately clear that Imogen wouldn't be able to sneak past – the whole staircase was lit up like a Christmas tree – and there would be no bluffing her way out either. Her jacket didn't quite cover the bow, and there was a discernable lump under her jacket where the quiver sat. She might have gotten away with it in the dark, where it was hard to make out any proper details, but there was no way she could under the scrutiny of those bright lights.

For a moment, she fingered the gun, considering just shooting the guard and being done with it. The shot would echo though, gaining her unwanted attention from who knows how many other people. Mission control wasn't very far behind her at all. Not to mention how her hands had shaken when she'd tried to shoot Clint. There was no time for mistakes like that in this sort of environment, where she was forced to face the woman at close quarters.

Only one way to do this then.

She stepped out of the shadows. The other woman jerked upright, caught off guard by the sudden company. "What are you doing here?" she snapped, replacing surprise with anger, trying to cover up that she hadn't been paying any attention to her surroundings at all.

"Got some business upstairs," Imogen replied, gesturing at the stairs with one hand, the other stopping her jacket from moving and revealing the bow. Damn it. Why did Barton have to use a weapon that was so hard to carry discreetly? How did he pull off undercover operations with this thing anyway?

The agent's eyes narrowed. "What's that under your coat?" she asked.

Imogen frowned, feigning confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play games with me, kid," the woman threatened, stepping within Imogen's reach. "That right-" Imogen cut her off, lunging forward in a tackle that drove the point of her shoulder into the guard's stomach, driving the air from her lungs. Both women went crashing to the ground, the guard struggling to push Imogen off her. One of her elbows caught the blonde in the face; growling at the sudden burst of pain in her jaw, Imogen pinned down her arms and wrapped her fingers around her throat, bearing down with all her weight.

The woman bucked and struggled, trying to throw off the smaller girl but to no effect; slowly, the lack of oxygen began to take effect, her movements becoming feebler until finally she fell still. "Not a kid," Imogen muttered under her breath, getting up and dusting herself off, touching the spot on her jaw where the woman had hit her. She'd have a bruise there, probably. Oh well.

Upstairs and through a door, and then she was in another hallway, this one wood-paneled and a great improvement on the plain concrete of the basement level. The voices of two men drifted from somewhere up ahead; relaxed, mindless chatter to keep them awake more than anything else. They'd heard none of her short battle downstairs apparently, but they were also between her and the door.

She shook her head slightly. Had she really been expecting to just walk out the front door? Silent, she crept down the hall, looking into each of the rooms that lined it until she found one with a window. The door clicked softly behind her and she darted across the room, unlocking the window and lifting up just enough for her to squeeze through. Somewhere, an alarm went off, loud enough to wake the dead and she jumped, then sped up. She could hear the voices outside getting louder. Quickly, she shed her jacket and then the bow and quiver, shoving them all through the window in one long bundle. There were footsteps in the hall, the sound of doors opening and closing nearby. Discarding any care, she went out the window headfirst, her heart thundering in her ears.

With a grunt, she pulled her legs through and landed in a crumpled heap in a garden bed. Someone entered the room she'd just left, flicking the light on and sending a wash of gold reaching for her, trying to expose her. Her breath catching in her throat, she scrambled to pull herself under a large bush to her right, shoving the weapons along in front of her, the low-lying branches of the bush parting to let her through and then falling again to cover her tracks.

It became immediately apparent that she'd climbed under a rosebush or something to that effect, thorns grabbing at her clothes as she pushed and wriggled her way under it. Gritting her teeth and mentally cursing her bad luck, she pulled herself free and continued, curling up between the bush and the wall and making herself as small as possible.

Not a moment later, a bald head protruded from the open window, carefully scanning the surrounding land. Imogen felt his eyes pass over her, imagined that they paused to scrutinize the suspicious patch of dark grey on the other side of the bush, and that his ears turned towards the sound of her shallow breaths. If he noticed, he didn't seem particularly alarmed as he disappeared, saying something to his partner as he closed the window. She counted to a rushed twenty to give them time to leave the room and then moved, pulling herself free of the bush with a string of hissed swear words that only the dark night could hear. They'd be back before long, searching for whoever had opened the window; even if they thought someone had broken _in _rather than _out,_ she needed to get moving. Stepping clear of the garden (why did SHIELD have a garden anyway?), she reached down and retrieved the bow and quiver, pulling on her coat and then throwing the weapons over her shoulder. No need to hide them now; if she was caught, they wouldn't get her in any more trouble than she was already in.

Breaking into a run, she headed directly away from the building, towards the lights of a town that lay just a few kilometers away. She glanced behind her, saw the flashing light of torches being swept back and forth, and quickened her pace.

Without warning, a rock materialised in front of her foot, grabbing at her boot and bringing her crashing down into a ditch. She let out a strangled cry as she fell heavily on her right shoulder and rolled, tucking herself into a ball again. Frozen, she lay waiting for shouts and flashing lights to expose her, but they didn't come.

Calm down. She had to calm down. Forcing a few deep breaths to shudder through her frame, she slowly untangled herself and turned, crawling to the edge of the ditch. The torches were on this side of the building now, but hadn't strayed far out. Maybe they had thought someone wanted to get in rather than out. Whatever the reason, she thanked her lucky stars they hadn't seen her running.

Sliding ungracefully back into the ditch, she sat herself down in the dirt and waited a minute for her heart to slow to a more reasonable pace. She could already feel an ache setting into her shoulder and ankle, which she guessed she'd twisted when she fell. Her arms and back stung too, where the thorns from the bush had pushed through her shirt to scratch at the skin below. With one hand, she reached back and ran a hand over the ends of the arrows – they felt as tight-packed as ever. Somehow she hadn't lost any throughout the whole ordeal. That was handy.

With a groan, she picked herself up out of the dirt, testing her weight on her sore foot. The ache got worse for a moment, but it bore her weight without too much complaint. Not twisted too badly then. With some difficulty she climbed out of the ditch and headed off towards the town again.

Half an hour later and she reached the first few streets – just dusty dirt roads with a handful of houses. Huffing a sigh, she glanced at the dark windows of the houses and then went for the first car she saw, getting it up and running in seconds. She was gone before its owners could even stir in their sleep.

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><p>By some bad luck, Will had found himself in mission control at two in the morning instead of sleeping peacefully in his bed, like he should have been. Curse whoever had decided to cause such a commotion in the middle of the night, he thought as he yawned and rubbed at his eyes in a desperate attempt to keep himself awake. If they were going to wake up everyone on base, they could at least had the decency to wait until morning.<p>

"Run me through what happened again?" he asked Murphy, more for something to focus on than because he'd forgotten any details. His eyes followed the agents bustling back and forth down the hall outside. Nothing like an emergency to get everybody moving.

Murphy sat back from his computer, swinging his chair to face Will. He liked Murphy – they were very similar in a lot of ways. They both stood at an average height with brown hair almost falling in their eyes, both were faithful members of HYDRA, both had younger sisters (Murphy hadn't seen his in ten years while Will couldn't shake Imogen, but that was beside the point). What differences they had complemented each other too; Will was more active, more suited to being a field agent, while Murphy liked to hang back and work on the technical side of things, gathering intel and guiding Will through the comm link. Murphy wasn't particularly liked by other agents, but Will was – no one would touch Murphy so long as they were friends.

"Someone broke in upstairs a couple of hours ago," he began, adjusting the glasses perched precariously on his nose. "Came in through a window, dodged the upstairs guards, tried to suffocate Agent Porter. She's still unconscious." The computer beeped, drawing his attention. "Looks like there's some stuff missing from Archives, which would explain why they bothered breaking in."

Will leant forward to better see the screen. "What was taken?" he asked. Murphy frowned, at his screen, pulling up an archive file.

"Bow," he answered, brow furrowed in confusion. "Arrows. What is this, the Hunger Games?"

Will leant back again, giving Murphy's chair a shove with one foot, a lazy grin coming over his face as the other man grabbed the desk to stop himself rolling away. "They're the weapons we took from Barton the other day, remember?"

"Oh yeah." Murphy still looked confused. "Geez Haylock. You think he came back for them?"

Will shrugged. "I wouldn't put it past him. Might sound like a crazy idea to you, but the guy's pretty unorthodox."

A young agent hurried through the door, catching Will's attention. Seeing that the rest of the room was busy, the boy approached them, wringing his hands nervously. "Agent Grace sent me," he quivered. "They did a headcount, and there's someone missing."

"Who?" Murphy asked. Will closed his eyes. He already knew the answer; no matter what you did with her, you just couldn't keep her out of trouble.

"Imogen Haylock," the kid replied, confirming his fears.

Murphy glanced at Will. "You okay there?"

He opened his eyes, looked at his friend a moment, and then nodded. "I'm going to go find the team, see if we can get any leads on Barton. He can't have gotten far."

"I'm on comms if you need me," Murphy said with a nod, which Will returned before standing and leaving the room, already outlining search plans in his head.

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><p>Dawn was just painting the horizon when Imogen finally made it back to the last place she'd seen Clint – the house he'd been hiding in when she first came to him. Parking two streets away, she donned his weapons again and walked the rest of the way, skirting around streetlights and darting from shadow to shadow. She paused across the street, watching the house for any sign of HYDRA but it was deserted – probably, they'd already gotten anything they needed from the place and gone off chasing any leads they had on Barton. That's what she would be doing, if she <em>had <em>any leads.

As it was, this house was the only clue she had.

She had a feeling the he hadn't quite moved on yet anyway. She didn't know _why_ she thought this, but she did trust her instincts, and so on a whim she made her way to the tree he'd used to escape and settled in its branches to wait (if she was honest, she was a just a bit disappointed not to find the Hawk there waiting for her, but then she remembered that he didn't expect to see her ever again). Her fingers found the piece of paper in her pocket as she waited, turning it over and over to settle her mind.

The closer daylight came, the more she began to doubt herself, until she was on the verge of packing up and leaving. If she wasn't right about this, if he didn't show, then she'd have to start searching from scratch, with no information to go on. She was good at finding people, but she was not infallible, and Clint Barton was good enough to avoid any of the normal ways HYDRA would use to track people – honestly, she had no idea where she'd go from here.

She was just about to leave when he finally showed, moving like a wraith in the twilight.

Imogen snapped to attention as he slipped across the yard and disappeared into the house, pulling out her note. It was written on the back of a receipt she'd found in the car, and contained nothing more than an address and a time, which was drawing closer with every minute that ticked by. If she could just get it to him, then she could meet him on _her_ terms, have the conversation she needed in a place where he couldn't trick or lay a trap for her. She didn't want to face him on anything but her advantage.

Pulling the bow over her head, she settled the grip in one hand and selected an arrow with the other, drawing I out and placing it on the string. Though she was in no way an archer, she knew some of the most basic technique from books and movies and hours spent mindlessly trawling the internet. Nock the arrow, turn side on (well, as much as you could while sitting in a tree), draw back the string. Keep your grip relaxed. Aim. Fire.

She angled the arrow towards the back steps and let the bowstring slip from her fingers, the arrow flying. It struck the pavers below the back steps with a shrill 'clink' and bounced into the lawn, wildly off target but still loud enough to catch his attention. The real archer appeared a moment later, moving carefully; she watched as he picked the arrow up and pulled off her note, studying it, committing it to memory. After a moment of careful reading, his eyes snapped up, searching for the person with his arrows.

Their eyes met. She stared at him like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide, and for a moment entertained the idea of coming down to meet him. But no, that wouldn't be a good idea. More likely than not, he'd just beat her up and tie her to a chair again, take his weapons and leave her there for HYDRA. Throwing the bow back over her head to rest with the quiver, she crept backwards through the branches, out of sight, and then scurried down the tree, jumping from a low branch into the neighbour's yard. Staying low, she crept back around to the front of the house, hunkering down in the neighbour's flower bed for a while. If Barton came looking for her, he didn't find her – didn't even come out to the street. He'd left, she guessed, gotten out of there before HYDRA came back. He'd know where to find her in just a few hours anyway.

Pulling herself from the garden, she stepped out onto the sidewalk and headed for the car she'd stolen, before anyone started wondering what a strange girl was doing on the street with a bow and a couple dozen arrows on her back.


	6. Stormwater

**A/N: I'm so very sorry this chapter took so long - I was having trouble with it and I rewrote one part like five times and then I was working and I fell off a racehorse and just...it's been a hectic week or so. Thank you all for your lovely reviews - they're what keep me going! I went and read them all multiple times while trying to finish this to keep myself going :D Hopefully the next one will be done and out faster than this one xD**

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><p><strong>6: Stormwater<strong>

The rain started soon after she left the house, just a light patter of drops on the windscreen at first, but before long it had built into a proper deluge. The day was grey and gloomy, thunder rumbling in the distance; she sat in her car, parked on a quiet corner, and watched the rain slide down the windows for hours, waiting for the time she would meet Barton again. Imogen could feel weariness setting in, slowing her mind and exaggerating her aches and pains. It had been at least 24 hours since she had last slept. For a time, she tried to doze off right there in the car, but her mind refused to be quiet. What would she say to him, it asked. What would he say back? Could she still have her choice?

Would he even come?

No, of course he would come. There was no doubt of that. He would want the bow back, and now he knew that it was in her possession. After all, what was Hawkeye without his weapons?

He would come.

1:47.

It was close enough to the time she'd specified. Flipping up the hood of her jacket, she left the warmth and safety of the car for the rain outside, reaching for the bow and arrows at the last second. They would attract attention, but if he was watching her, she wanted her bargaining chips where she could see them, not sitting there in a car where he could take them at his leisure.

The small coffee shop she'd given him the address to was only a block or two from the car, though it might as well have been five miles for the soaking she got. She caught sight of herself in the window as she sat down at a table outside, wet hair sticking to her forehead and dripping down her back, dirt still smeared on her face, a lovely bruise blooming on her jaw. Her clothes were cleaner now, though still torn and dirty-looking, from climbing under thorny bushes and rolling around in ditches. Displeased, she turned away and resolved not to look again.

Her eyes turned to the people around her instead. She'd placed herself in plain view, sitting outside the shop, but with the unusual weapons half-hidden behind her leg most people treated her like any other customer, giving her no more than a precursory glance. None of them looked like HYDRA, not that she was really expecting them to crash the party just yet. Surely even they couldn't track her that fast.

Clint saw her, without doubt, but she would have missed him completely if it weren't for the dog (it was almost embarrassing, being out-played by a dog). She turned to look down the street just in time to see him crouch down and scratch behind the ears of some big black dog. Not for the first time, she found herself wondering how this man was one of SHIELD's top agents, as she pulled in a deep breath and stood, throwing his weapons over her shoulder.

He saw her coming out of the corner of his eye, instantly recognising his bow slung across her back and rose, casting on last, regretful look after the dog. "Imogen," he greeted her, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes drifted to the coffee shop behind her, and the cup clutched in a recent customer's hand as they walked past the pair. "We need coffee," he decided abruptly. "Can't do anything without coffee."

A demand for caffeine wasn't what Imogen was expecting but she hid any surprise and shrugged, motioning for him to lead the way. He did so, looking almost casual – she would have believed it, had she not seen the tension building in his muscles, changing the way he held himself, the way he walked and moved about, ready for a fight. Whatever else he was, Clint Barton was not stupid.

She waited patiently just out of arm's reach as he ordered and paid for his coffee, then followed him to a table by the window. His drink came a moment later, and he gulped down half of it (or thereabouts) in the blink of an eye.

"What happened to your face?" he asked as he set the mug down, gesturing to a spot on his jaw.

"I left HYDRA," she replied bluntly.

He paused, raised an eyebrow. "Made your choice then?"

"No."

"So you'll go back."

"Maybe."

"Why'd you leave then?"

"A lot of people have been lying to me," she snapped.

He chuckled, gulping down coffee. "The whole organization is built on lies, kid. You better get used to it."

"Not a kid," she insisted.

"You look like a kid."

"You need to get your eyes checked."

"You need your brain checked. My eyes are _fine_."

Imogen shrugged, watching Clint down the last of his coffee with an appreciative sigh. He waved the waitress over, asking for more. "So are you planning to give me my stuff back, or did you break out of HYDRA with it just to keep it as a souvenir?"

"Don't know yet." Her eyes drifted to the window. "Depends."

"On HYDRA?" She hummed in reply, earning a sigh from Clint. The waitress returned, steam curling from the mug in her shaking hands. In an aside, Imogen wondered why. Was it really so nerve-wracking carrying a cup of coffee? "I don't know much about HYDRA," he continued once she was gone. "But they don't seem like the type to take back deserters."

She took in a deep, controlled breath. He'd hit the nail on the head, of course. HYDRA didn't take kindly to people who left them; deserters or otherwise. She could easily have signed her death warrant the moment she climbed out of that window, and she'd have no way of knowing until they caught up with her, or she turned herself in. That was her choice now, she realised. That was her choice, and both could end with a bullet in her head.

When she didn't answer, Clint laughed,, a short, humourless bark spat out between sips of coffee as he lifted his mug to his lips.

"Why'd you give me a choice anyway?" she asked. Behind her, the door opened, a wave of cold air reaching for the back of her neck and sending shivers down her spine. She saw Clint's eyes dart over the newcomer but kept her own focused on him, acting casual. She saw the man's back as he walked past a moment later – heavily built, wrapped in a thick jacket, bald head, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke following him through the room.

Clint sighed, mug clinking back down onto the table. "Told you. I didn't want to kill you. Don't like killing kids."

"But I'm HYDRA."

A smile broke over his face. "I can fix that. Could have fixed that. Kids are always the easiest to fix."

"I'm not broken," she said indignantly.

"No," he agreed, letting silence fall. "Chipped and cracked maybe. But not broken," he added as an afterthought.

She thought about it, let it sit in her mind. Chipped. Cracked. Imperfect. Perhaps not broken now, but likely to break sometime in the future. "What makes you think that?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I've known a few broken people," he said around his coffee. "Known plenty who were headed that way."

"Yeah, you seem real popular," she remarked dryly. "So popular that the only people who want to hang out with you now are the ones that are trying to kill you."

"You still want to kill me, Imogen?" She shrugged. "Well, at least I don't do HYDRA's dirty work without knowing why," he shot back casually.

"Actually, you've been doing it for years, idiot," she said. "Everything SHIELD is HYDRA, remember? You've been working for them all this time, you just didn't know it."

His jaw locked, grip on his mug tightened. "I think we're done here," he ground out. "You gonna give me my stuff, or do I have to get that for myself too?"

One of her hands dropped to the bow. "I'm not giving it to you."

For a moment, he looked like he'd attack her right then and there. He was thinking about it. But then, his eyes drifted over the rest of the shop, bustling with people, and he thought better of it. He stood, digging money out of his pocket to pay for his coffee. "Watch yourself, kid," he said, dropping a note on the table.

She let him leave.

Waited five minutes.

Someone stood to leave at the same time she did. She threw a quick glance in that direction as she set the quiver on her back; it was the guy from before, the one that smelled of cigarettes and bad life choices. He almost caught her eye – a creeping feeling made its way across her neck.

Shaking it off, she turned and hurried out the door.

The cold wind hit her before she even closed the door, ripping straight through her shirt and jacket to sink its teeth into the skin below, sucking the warmth from her body. Rain splashed into her face, thrown by the wind before she could draw up her hood, and puddles soaked her shoes in minutes as she splashed through them on her path down the street. She was cold to the bone before she reached the end of the block, not dressed for the weather (she'd opted for light and flexible over warm when deciding what to take with her), her steps growing faster at the thought of the car that was waiting for her, with its dry interior and promise of escape from the archer and the cigarette man following her. Clint had disappeared from sight, no doubt hiding in shadows and tracking her movements, waiting for her to let her guard down. The man from the coffee shop though, he wasn't so covert, following her doggedly just ten or so metres back, undeterred by the rain and the wind.

Out of nowhere, something heavy crashed into her shoulder – the one that was already bruised, of course – sending her reeling sideways trying desperately to regain her balance. Arms grabbed at her and feet kicked at her legs in a desperate scramble to bring her to the ground. For a moment, she thought it was the man following her, and that he'd caught up without her noticing, but the smell was missing, as was the body mass. This man was thinner (though still thick-set, like his companion) and much cleaner, with big, meaty hands and steel-capped boots that were currently trying to break her leg or something. Grunting, she twisted free of the grip he'd managed to gain on her arm, lashing out with both fists until he gave her room to move, to get out of his reach and regain her balance.

Almost immediately, he was advancing again, driving her backwards into a small street with a toothless grin. The cigarette man caught up to them then, coming up beside his friend and blocking any chance of exit. She glanced down the street; there were two more waiting at the other end. No escape.

The first man lunged forward, sweeping at her feet. Imogen jumped it, blocked his left fist, ducked under another. Delivered a swift upper-cut as she straightened, with all the power of her body behind it, and his head snapped back painfully. The cigarette man appeared as he stumbled backwards, getting much too close for comfort and filling her lungs with his stink. He buried his knee in her stomach, driving all the air from her body, then gave her a shove and a trip, sending her falling backwards.

Her head cracked painfully against the pavement, sending stars dancing across her vision and a wave of pain rolling through her brain, and the quiver both broke her fall and twisted her back awkwardly as she landed on it. Trying desperately to suck in a breath, her heart beating way too fast as her whole body went into overdrive, she forced herself to roll over onto her hands and knees, trying to get back on her feet. She really hoped Clint was still watching her. She'd take the angry archer over these guys any day. A boot buried itself in her stomach as she choked on her own breath, throwing her sideways; a gun pressed against her leg, reminding her it was there, waiting. She rolled again, pulled it out, aimed in the direction of her attackers, and pulled the trigger.

The cigarette man let out a strangled cry as the shot echoed and went down, clutching at his leg. Crimson began to drop from the hole the bullet had ripped in his pants, staining the grey material an even darker colour. The other one, the one she'd given a solid blow to the jaw rallied, leaping and grabbing at her hand, twisting. She let out a loud cry in protest as a hot, knife-like pain shot through her wrist and the gun fell from her fingers, skittering away out of reach. He kept twisting, making the pain worse. She clenched her teeth, refusing to scream.

"Stop!" A familiar voice saved her, its owner appearing at the end of the street. Her attacker listened, dropping her wrist and retreating, grabbing the gun as he did. Cradling her arm and breathing in short, hard gasps, she stared at this newcomer, blinking spots from her vision.

There were lines in her brother's face, like he wasn't happy, like he didn't understand. "I told you not to hurt her," he said to the man who didn't have a hole in his leg. He sounded…angry?

The oaf just shrugged. "She didn't stop like you said she would. Had to stop her somehow."

Will's focus turned from the idiots to her. "Imogen?" he asked, sounding for all the world like he was talking to a five year old. He'd never talked to her like that before. Or maybe he had. Her mind was so foggy that she couldn't remember. She didn't like it when people talked to her like that; did she let him talk to her like that?

Thinking about it hurt, so she stopped thinking, focusing on the thing that she did remember, the thought that didn't hurt to think. He was a liar. He'd lied to her, all this time. Slowly, she pulled the bow over her head, setting it in the hand that hurt the most (it hurt even more to wrap her fingers around the bow, but she grit her teeth and pushed past it).

"What are you doing?" Will asked. A shadow passed over his face. "Did Barton put you up to this?"

She shook her head, searching for her tongue. "No one put me up to anything," she said slowly. "No one except HYDRA, when they told me to kill."

"You're delirious," her brother decided, a pleading note in his voice.

"I'm fine," she snapped. Her other hand reached back behind her, fingers brushing the ends of the arrows.

"Look, I don't know what Barton did to you," Will tried. "But we can help you. I won't let him hurt you, Imogen, I promise."

"You promise?" she sputtered, hand dropping from the arrows in the wake of her anger. "You can help?" She had the sudden urge to laugh, but she bit it back. "Like when you helped me after _they_ died by lying to me? When you promised you'd find the people that did it?"

His brow furrowed again. "Mum and Dad? But I-"

"I read the file," she cut him off. "It wasn't SHIELD's enemies. That was all a story you made up to make me feel better. It was HYDRA. It was always HYDRA. You knew that too, didn't you? But you never made good on that promise."

"It was a stupid thing I said when we were little! You weren't even supposed to remember it!"

"Okay, so I wasn't supposed to remember the promise you made. Whatever." She stopped to suck in a deep breath and clear her head, glaring daggers at him. "Why didn't you at least tell me _how_ they died; _why_ they died?"

"I couldn't."

"Yes, you could!" Her voice rose to a shout, though the effort of it made her head pound.

"No, I couldn't!" His voice matched hers, sending pain shooting through her brain. "You were too young," he continued in a quieter voice, taking a deep breath. "You wouldn't have understood."

"I'm twenty three, Will. I think that's old enough to know the truth."

"I know, I know," he huffed over her, stopping her. "It just never came up." His eyes ran over her, assessing every inch of her. "Look, you're tired, and hurt, and probably concussed," he pleaded with her. "Just come with me and we can talk about this when you're in a better state of mind."

"We're talking about it now," she replied stubbornly, making him sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Why does it even matter?" he asked. "They're dead. The details aren't going to change that."

"It matters because they're our _parents_, Will," she said through gritted teeth, hardly believing what she was hearing.

"You didn't even know them-"

"I watched them die!" she all but screamed at him. Silence fell over the street; her, standing, panting, alone, the five HYDRA agents staring at her. She could feel their eyes burning into her skin, marking her, branding her. She'd never be able to wash away their scrutiny, she felt in that moment, though the thought didn't bother her like it usually would. All she wanted right now was the chance to lie down and let the throbbing in her head calm and dissipate, let her wrist fall prone somewhere where stabbing pains couldn't run up and down her arm when she moved.

She was letting the pain get away with her, but she didn't care about that either.

Imogen was so distracted, she missed the fleeting glimpse she could have had of the seventh member of their party, missed him vaulting lightly over the front gate of a house nearby and walking casually up the road behind her. She noticed Will grow stiff, noticed his eyes move to something behind her, and only then did she turn to see Clint sauntering up the street to join her, like he hadn't just placed at least five HYDRA agents between himself and his freedom.

"Barton." Will spat the word out like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I'm guessing this is your brother?" Clint commented casually, eyeing Will.

"What are you doing here?" Imogen asked whirling to face him with a scowl on her face.

"Even better; what did you do to my sister?" Will added.

"Your brother sucks," Clint continued, ignoring both of them. "You really wanna hang out with him?"

"Will…" Imogen grit her teeth. Her head was pounding, from confusion just as much as the knock it had taken. She needed to lie down, or crawl into a quiet corner until it stopped, or something. Instead, she was surrounded by idiots.

Will turned to his remaining muscle man. "Get him," he hissed. The man who'd careened into her shoulder earlier stepped forwards menacingly. Clint's eyes widened at the sight of him.

"Could really use my bow right about now, kid," he muttered to her.

She looked down at the weapon in her hands.

"Last chance," he added lightly. She thought about it, swallowed hard, and then turned to Will.

"Tell me," she said. "Did they leave you anything? When they died?"

He looked confused, but shook his head anyway. "Nothing. You know that. What is _wrong _with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me," she snapped, turning to Clint. Offering him the bow.

"Don't do this, Imogen," Will warned her. "He's only going to use you to do his dirty work."

"Yeah, because no one's done that before," she replied icily.

Clint took the bow, a grin splitting his previously impassive face wide open at the feeling of the familiar weapon in his hand. "Knew you were better than that," he said, reaching over her shoulder and plucking an arrow from the quiver. It sprouted from the stomach of Will's henchman a second later, and he fell with a surprised grunt, hand wrapped around the arrow.

Will looked murderous as he watched his second agent fall, but still he hung back. She wondered why. He wasn't one to let others do all the work for him. Usually, he'd be right in the middle of things, like the good leader he was.

His eyes flicked over her head, at the same time as Clint pivoted and fired behind. She turned – and barely caught a glimpse of her attacker before something heavy caught her in the side of the head.


	7. Flight Risk

**A/N: So I finally got back to this. I don't know how long it's been since I last uploaded (has it been a week? I think it's been a week 0_0 I don't even know) but I had dayyyyys of no writing time and it suckeeed. **

**Thanks to my (three?) reviewers from the last chapter for keeping me sane and reminding me that this is a thing I'm supposed to be writing. And to everyone, I apologise for how much this chapter sucks - I did run through it once, but I'm editing while tired and braindead so I've probably missed everything important xD Otherwise, enjoyyy :)**

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><p><strong>7: Flight Risk<strong>

Warm arms wrapped around her. Lifting. Carrying. Drowning? No, that was just the rain. Footsteps, crunching and splashing.

The arms left, letting cold embrace her. She slumped sideways, they caught her again. Words blurred together, her aching wrist turning cold and heavy. Something slammed. Pain split her head open.

The quiet mutter of machinery waking up lulled her back to sleep.

* * *

><p>Sunlight reached for her, burning at her eyes, turning all her dreams red and asking her to wake. She chanced a look, but the world was too bright, so she turned away and buried her head into the cushion behind her, falling again.<p>

* * *

><p>Silence.<p>

No, not silence. There was the wind, pushing against the window in wild gusts, twisting the trees across the way. There was the sound of traffic rumbling on past, somewhere behind her. There was her breathing, just barely a whisper as she pulled each breath in and out.

There was her heart, trying to climb its way out of her chest as it realised she was waking.

She had a crick in her neck, an ache that nagged at her until finally she shifted and relieved it. Her head ached, centered on the right side. No shifting would relieve it. In fact, as she moved it flared, like knives poking at her brain, and then settled into a dull ache again. She stopped moving.

Her eyes drifted open, slowly, slowly. There was no sun to burn at them this time, if that really had happened; the world was overcast and filled with the long shadows of a late afternoon. She was in a car, parked outside of a…convenience store? She turned her head as far as she dared, looking down the street each way. There was nothing familiar about this place at all. How had she gotten here? How had she forgotten?

Imogen frowned in confusion, thinking back. A café. She'd met Clint there, in the rain, and then…Will had shown up. Her head pounded. The rest was a blur. Had she been fighting? She'd probably been fighting. Headaches were usually a result of fighting.

But now she was here, and it wasn't raining. She'd never seen a fight end like this. Even if she'd been knocked out, she'd always wake in the same place she'd fallen, or (god forbid) a hospital bed. Not in a strange car, in a strange place, for no immediately apparent reason.

She shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. Something tugged at her wrist, sending white-hot pain shooting up her arm, and she froze. Well, she could remember _that _part all too clearly now. Chancing a look down, she winced at the swelling, and the handcuff pressing against it. The other end of the cuffs was fastened securely to the door handle – to stop her escaping, she supposed.

Now she _really_ wanted to know what was going on.

Whoever had been driving this car would be back soon, her mind registered, throwing years of training at her like it would help. Out, it told her. She had to get out, get away. Assess the situation. Her eyes went to the glove box in front of her – with her good, free arm, she opened it, searching for something she could use to pick the lock on the cuffs or as a weapon against this other person, but there was nothing in there but the car manual and a few miscellaneous bits of paper. The console compartment was the same. She shoved them both closed and leaned back with a huff, resigning herself to her fate. This person was smart enough to keep anything dangerous out of reach, obviously.

The doors to the convenience store (or whatever kind of shop it was; she didn't care for the specifics) opened, catching her eye. She recognised the man as soon as he walked out. Clint. Of course. She found herself relaxing at the sight of him, like he was no big threat at all (he could kill her in a split second if he wanted to, but apparently she hadn't quite digested that piece of information). She should have guessed it really, would have guessed it if her head didn't feel like it was tearing itself apart from the inside out. Half-baked kidnappings weren't really HYDRA's style – if it were them, she'd wake up in a cell, or not at all. They were Clint Barton's style though, without doubt.

"Hey kid," Clint greeted her as he climbed into the car, throwing a shopping bag into her lap.

"Not a kid," Imogen mumbled back automatically, opening the bag with one hand and peeing inside. Clothing, mainly, maybe some food underneath it all. Most importantly, a box of headache tablets and a bottle of water. She grabbed those immediately, shoving the rest of it off her lap and down to the floor by her feet.

"Knew you'd need those," he said smugly, pulling out of the car park and grinning as she downed two tablets in quick succession.

"What the hell happened?" she asked, capping the bottle and dropping it down with the rest of the stuff. "And why am I handcuffed inside a car with you?"

"Well I wasn't going to leave you to die, was I?" He sounded way too upbeat for her liking. "Not after I went to all the trouble of not killing you in the first place." Imogen almost wished he _would_ kill her, if only to spare her all this confusion.

"Will wouldn't have killed me," she argued half-heartedly.

"Maybe not, but someone else would have," Clint replied. "You're a flight risk. Which is also why you're handcuffed to the car, by the way. Didn't want you wandering off before we could talk."

"Great," she muttered, leaning back and staring down the long highway ahead of them, following it far into the distance. "How'd you get away from them?"

He shrugged. "Put a few arrows in people and they usually decide to leave you alone."

"You put one in Will?"

"Shot him in the shoulder," Clint confirmed with a nod. "Didn't think you'd be very happy if I killed him." She nodded in turn. Though she wouldn't openly admit it, she felt a rush of pleasure at the idea of Will with an arrow through his arm. He deserved it, after everything that had happened, after the web of lies he'd tangled her up in. Maybe it would keep him off her trail for a few days too; yes, that'd be nice. She needed room to breathe, to untangle the web, before she faced him again.

The fight came to mind again, more of it piecing together as she remembered. Like her handing Clint the bow, choosing SHIELD (or whatever side he was on now) over her family and HYDRA. She glanced at the backseat; sure enough, the bow and quiver were there. A few arrows sat loose, tossed in almost like a second thought, blood dripping down their shafts and from the tips to stain the car seat below. Clint didn't seem overly concerned by this, not that he should be. There was no doubt that he'd stolen the car.

Was she on the right path now? She turned back to face the road. For a moment, gnawing anxiety crept into her gut, twisting cold fingers of fear around her heart, but she squished it like a bug, watching it crawl away back into its dark corner. Worrying would do nothing for her. She could take back words, but actions were final and definite; there was no way to pretend she hadn't handed over that bow.

Clint was right. Someone would kill her for that. She had made herself a risk now, one that HYDRA could not afford to take. She was worth nothing but the bullet they'd bury between her eyes.

She was a risk Clint couldn't afford either, really, but she would address that at some other point. She already knew he'd decided he wasn't going to kill her, decided that he was going to turn her into a proper SHIELD agent or something.

"So where are we going?" Imogen sighed, pushing it all out of her mind. Just the act of thinking was making her brain hurt.

"Don't know yet," he replied, much too upbeat for her liking. She screwed up her nose at his cheer. "Just away from here."

"You going to let me out of this thing any time soon?" She gestured at the cuff with her free hand.

"Probably not."

"I'm not going to run away, or rat you out, or anything," she said sullenly.

"No, but you'll come up with something equally stupid and get yourself killed."

"Out of the two of us, you are way more likely to be the one doing something stupid," she argued.

"What makes you say that?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well for a start, you put yourself right in the middle of six HYDRA agents, without weapons or a proper plan."

He thought about it for a moment, and then agreed with a reluctant sigh. "I can get myself _out _of trouble though," he defended. "_Your_ escape plan was literally to fire arrows around them while they beat you up."

"Around them? I would have hit them," she replied haughtily.

"Your whole form is terrible," he informed her gleefully. "You wouldn't hit the side of a mountain."

"I think I could hit them at least _once _when they're that close."

"Yeah?" He laughed at her. "Well you just keep telling yourself that. Next time I might just watch."

Huffing a sigh, she gave up on arguing with him and sunk lower in her seat instead, moving carefully to avoid jostling her bad arm. Her head hurt too much to be bothered with him; she'd come back to it later, when she had an actual comeback.

Reveling in his win, Clint reached over and switched on the radio, tuning into some fresh mix station playing trashy pop music. They kept driving.

* * *

><p>"Man, he got you <em>good<em>."

Will hissed as Murphy pressed down on the arrow wound in his shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. "Can you just _stich it up_ already?" he asked, a little more forcefully than he probably should have (but damn manners or anything of the sort; he'd just had an arrowhead dug out of his shoulder, he was entitled to a snap every now and then).

The techie looked alarmed for a minute, then slowly peeled away the wad of material he had in his hand to peer at the wound. "Hey, it's not like they go over 'arrow wounds' in the basic med course," he replied, pressing down again.

"It's the same as getting shot with a bullet, just stitch it up already."

Murphy rolled his eyes. "Hold this then," he instructed, leaving Will to press down on the wound and reaching for the medical kit beside him, searching out a needle and thread. "You better not hit me," he muttered as he prepared. "Last time I stitched up John, he gave me a black eye."

"I'm not going to hit you," Will replied through clenched teeth.

Murphy grunted, and pried his hand away from his shoulder, swabbing it with something that made it twice as painful. Will grit his teeth. No wonder John had punched him.

A shadow loomed over the both of them, distracting Will from the pain in his shoulder. He glanced up, and found himself staring straight into the eyes of his commanding officer. Not exactly the person he'd been hoping to see while seated at the back of a van half-dressed in tac gear, while blood slowly trickled down his arm.

The man waved a piece of paper at him. "This report better not be a joke, Haylock," he said, his gaze unwavering. "If you filed this just because you want your sister back-"

Will shook his head. "You really think I'd do that, Agent Morrell?" he asked.

"Your record is outstanding," Morrell replied. "Which is why I'm inclined to believe you." He handed the report back to Will. "You're in charge of this mission. Find her, bring her back."

"Yes sir."

"Oh, and Haylock?" Will looked up again. "She's not one of us. Remember that. HYDRA don't show mercy to the people who work against us." He swallowed hard, and nodded. Morrell left.

"What was that about?" Murphy asked a moment later, turning to wash his hands and grab a clean bandage.

"This," Will replied, holding out the report for him to read. Not for the first time that day, Murphy's eyes widened. "I'm going to need your help with this, Murph."

"Of course," he replied, setting about bandaging. "I'll find her. This is the biggest mission we've ever been given; there is no way I'm sitting out."

"There's no way I'd _let_ you sit out. Can't have you getting slack."

"Done," Murphy announced, snapping the med kit closed. "I'm guessing you want to get to work straight away."

Will touched the bandages on his shoulder, and then reached for his shirt. "Of course," he replied easily, pulling the shirt on. "We need to find her _fast_. Before Barton can take her out of range."

"Any idea what he wants with her?" The techie shoved his medical supplies into a corner and climbed further into the van, waking up a bank of computers.

"Not yet." Will followed him in, watching the screens blink to life. They were already searching for the two runaways, but had yet to find anything, much to his contempt. "I'll find out soon enough though."

Murphy had no doubt of it.


	8. Mistrust

**A/N: This took me so long, I know, and I'm so sorry. Hopefully there's still people even reading this .-. To kind of make up for it, at least this is the longest chapter so far? Enjoyyyy :)**

* * *

><p><strong>8: Mistrust<strong>

There comes a point when even a sniper, conditioned for hours of waiting and watching, must sleep.

Imogen had lost count of how many towns they'd skirted around, how many long highways they'd followed. Night had come and gone twice (or thereabouts), but somehow, Clint was still driving, only stopping when he was about to run out of fuel. If she felt tired and stiff, despite dozing her way through a good part of the trip, she couldn't imagine how weary he must be.

"You need to stop," she said eventually, as the lights of another town came into view, drawing closer and closer.

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Just…just gotta-" A yawn cut him off. Imogen rolled her eyes.

"I _can_ drive, you know," she said.

He laughed. "I brought you along, sure, but don't start thinking that means I trust you."

"That's not what I'm thinking."

"Well…good. Because I don't."

"I'd like to live through the day though."

"What d'you mean?"

She huffed impatiently. "I _mean_, you're going to crash this car and kill us both if you don't _stop driving_." Finally, she saw him take a minute to think about it, eyes fixed to the road. They were drawing closer and closer to civilization; he'd have to find a way around the town soon, if he wanted to avoid it like he had every other place they'd passed. For the first time in two days though, he showed no signs of turning off.

The faintest semblance of hope rose in her chest. Maybe he'd _finally_ seen the light. He definitely needed to rest. Surely he could see that too.

"Fine," he relented with a sigh. Satisfied, she nodded, turned back to the road, and slid lower in her seat, curling up like a cat. Ten minutes later, he finally pulled into a hotel. She waited patiently as he organised a room, and stealthily moved his bow and a bag full of god-knows-what inside, before freeing her from the cuffs. Aware of his careful gaze on her, she stepped out of the car into a dark, cold morning, stretching out her stiff muscles. Her eyes drifted towards the motel entrance, towards the numerous escape routes around the place, all open paths to freedom now that she was unbound, but her feet followed Clint, her escapes left untouched.

The room was dark and dank, with a lingering smell of mildew, but it was clean, with fresh linen and sturdy furniture. There was an old radiator in the corner, marking just how old the building was; Clint put the cuffs down on top of it. "Go and have a shower, clean yourself up," he told her, pointing at the small adjoining bathroom. "I'll put those back on when you're done." She didn't argue, just took the clothes he threw at her from his bag of mysteries and went, closing the door behind her. There was a mirror directly opposite, throwing her reflection in her face right as she turned around. For the first time, she realised just how dirty she really was, just how much she really _did_ need new clothes (her shirt alone was pockmarked with tears from numerous thorny bushes, dirt practically ingrained in the material from her adventures. She screwed up her nose and turned away from it again.

Her whole body melted under the hot water of the shower, muscles that had been stiff and sore since the fight loosening and relaxing for the first time in days, feeling almost normal. There was soap in there, the usual little tube that comes in hotel rooms, and she used all of it, scrubbing herself all over and watching dirt from gardens and ditches and streets wash away in cloudy bubbles.

The clothes turned out to be another matter entirely. Clint apparently had very little fashion sense; the pair of soft black track pants were all well and good, but the bright purple shirt just about hurt to look at…not to mention the loud 'I Heart Hawkeye' emblazoned across the front. She assumed it was Clint's idea of a joke. It wasn't very funny. He could have done better.

Imogen glanced at her old shirt. Dirty, ripped, and stiff with sweat, it wasn't the most inviting piece of clothing. A loud sigh escaped her. He could have at least bought her a normal shirt. Reluctantly, she pulled on the shirt and left the bathroom, preparing a speech with which to chew Clint out about his idea of good clothing choice.

The plan didn't get much further. Barton, it turned out, had _really _needed that rest – he was stretched out on the bed, fast asleep. Hadn't even lasted the time it took for her to shower, after all that, she thought with amusement. She glanced at the cuffs, lying forgotten on the radiation. Should she do it herself? The idea wasn't one of her favourites, and the couch across the room looked much more inviting. Besides, it wasn't like Clint was waking up any time soon.

The choice was easy, then. She drew the curtains closed, shutting out the morning sun, and then settled down in the couch to wait.

* * *

><p>It was still morning when Clint began to toss and turn, drawing her attention. At first, it was just the occasional twitch, disturbing her from her own attempts to fall asleep, a muttered word here and there that she had no hope of making out. His distress built as the morning wore on, movement becoming more violent, incoherent mumbling growing louder. For a while, she just sat and watched, not sure what to do – as he grew more frantic though, it became increasingly apparent that she'd have to do <em>something<em>, if only to keep anyone from coming to see what was going on.

Were you supposed to wake people who were caught in a nightmare? She had a feeling she'd read something once that said no, waking him would be dangerous (and not just for her, what with the weapon that was undoubtedly hidden under his pillow) – but she also saw no other solution to the problem.

He'd better not kill her, she thought. She hadn't come all this way just to end up dead.

Standing behind him, she reached out and gave him a solid shove, then ducked for cover. He shot up, wide-eyed and breathing heavily, a gun pointed at the spot where her head had been just seconds before. She peeked out at him from over the mattress, having dropped to a crouch next to the bed, waiting for a sign that it was safe to stand again.

Only once he had run his eyes over the entire room did he slowly lower the gun and regain control of his breathing. She stood and then perched on the end of the bed, staring at the floral curtains Clint had nearly put a bullet through. In the corner of her eye, she saw him glance between her and the cuffs several times. "Didn't I, uh…" He gestured uselessly, but she got what he was trying to say and shook her head.

"You fell asleep," she told him bluntly.

"Right." Silence. "Why'd you wake me up?"

Imogen shrugged. "You were moving around a lot, and muttering. Figured I should wake you up before someone next door complained or something."

"Right."

"Nightmares?" she asked casually. He eyed her suspiciously, and didn't answer. She rolled her eyes. "Obviously nightmares."

"Everyone has nightmares," Clint replied defensively.

"Not me," she replied. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. She shrugged. "Never had a dream in my life."

"Right." It wasn't hard to tell that he didn't believe her. "Stay here," he instructed unnecessarily, standing and stumbling into the bathroom. Rolling her eyes once more, she returned to the couch.

* * *

><p>They didn't speak another word to each other until they were back on the road again, Clint with his second cup of coffee in hand. "Nice shirt," he commented as he turned onto the highway.<p>

Imogen felt the urge to punch him, and reeled it back in fast. "I hate you," she muttered instead, glancing down at the item of clothing in question.

"A lot of people say that," he informed her cheerfully.

"I'm not surprised. No one likes a guy who buys his own shirt."

He glanced at the 'I Heart Hawkeye' on her shirt again, looking amused. "I thought it might inspire you."

"To do what?!"

"Refrain from killing me."

"Are you ever going to get over that?"

"Are you handcuffed to the door?"

She glanced down at her arm (now free), and sullenly accepted his point. "You gonna let me drive so you can sleep?" she asked instead.

He shook his head. "I got plenty of sleep."

"You got like, four hours. If that."

"Four hours is plenty."

"You know you're not superhuman, right?" She fixed him with a look of contempt as she said it, making him shift uncomfortably.

"Says who?" he shot back, pretending to be unfazed. "I am a _superhero_ you know."

"A regular one. You're the most regular superhero there is."

"And you're really mean."

"No." She dropped her gaze, looking down at her hands instead, folded neatly in her lap. "I'm just honest. It's not my fault if what's true hurts."

Clint reached up to rub the back of his neck, and then grabbed at his coffee again. "Dunno kid. Still think you might just be mean."

"Think what you want," Imogen replied with a shrug. "Everyone else does. And I'm not a kid." Without giving him a chance to reply, she reached out and turned the radio on, flicking it to the first station that she could find. He got the point, and left it alone, letting unfamiliar music filter through the dusty speakers and fill up the car as they drove on.

* * *

><p>Sleep didn't come to either that day, just hours of staring down road after road. Clint didn't need any prompting to turn into a motel as dusk drew on, much to Imogen's satisfaction. This one wasn't much better than the last place they'd visited – small and cheap, but clean at least, just a bed and a bathroom and not much else (there was a TV here at least, almost making up for the armchair she'd have to curl up in).<p>

It was a warm night, despite the intermittent breeze that picked up every now and then to provide a few seconds of sweet relief before the heat pressed in again. There was no air conditioner, so they threw the window wide open to catch what wind there was, snipers across the way be damned. Clint claimed the bed, leaving her with the armchair, as she'd expected. For a couple hours, she curled up there and tried to sleep, but dangerous things came swirling through her head, keeping her awake, thoughts she hadn't entertained in days. She'd been deliberately keeping herself busy with other thoughts, focusing in on the concussion that had disappeared in the last day or so and driving far, far away from all her troubles.

HYDRA. Item 548. Her parents. Will.

Lies and liars. All of them. She hated liars.

It was too much, too much to push away and fall asleep in peace. Throwing off any impressions of sleep, she stood and padded quietly across the room, footsteps muffled by the carpet, easing the door open just enough for her to slip through, closing it just as carefully.

She glanced back through the window. Clint still appeared to be sleeping. Nodding to herself, she buried her hands in her pockets and wandered away towards the motel entrance. The pavement was warm beneath her bare feet, just cool enough not to burn them, the stone holding desperately onto the warmth of the sun that had beat down on it all day. She stopped at the entrance, considering the quiet road beyond, but still she felt no urge to run. What would be the point anyway? Clint would find her, or HYDRA would find her, or she'd just get settled in some kind of life and everything would catch up to her. Running away never worked; once you started, you couldn't stop. Things always caught up to you in the end.

Imogen wasn't the running away type anyway. That was half her trouble – she never backed down or turned away (the other half of her trouble was her brutal honesty, probably. People didn't like seeing the truth).

Turning away from the road, she circled around the long row of motel rooms and parked cars to the back of the building. Everything was more scattered here; there was what looked like a laundromat, still awake even in the middle of the night, a dark barbeque area, and a playground. Down the back and surrounded by a fence was a pool, the whole area illuminated by the soft glow of underwater lights. She drifted towards it, soon finding herself sitting cross-legged at the very edge of the pool, staring down into its depths.

Clint found her there too. She heard his light footsteps, heard him open and close the gate. "Thought you were asleep," she said casually as his feet stopped beside her, clad as every in a pair of heavy black combat boots.

"Woke up when you left," his voice replied from somewhere above her. Grunting, she turned her attention back to the pool. "What are you doing out here anyway?"

She shrugged, pulling her jacket closer around her. "Couldn't sleep," she admitted in an unusually quiet voice.

"So you decided to hang out by the pool?"

"You got any better ideas?" she snapped back.

"Well," he drawled lazily. "There's a nice playground back there…" She didn't even deign to answer. Eventually, he sighed and lowered himself down to the pavers as well, a careful distance from the water.

"Any idea where you're driving to yet?" she asked, just to break the silence.

"Maybe," he replied, trying his best to be mysterious.

"So no, not really then," she said with a roll of her eyes.

Clint almost looked offended. "I know where I'm going!"

"But you're not going to tell me."

"Nope." His voice was smug, just like his face when she glanced at him. Rolling her eyes once more, she returned her gaze to the water. Silence fell over them both, reclaiming the warm night – in the absence of the wind, nothing moved, the world dark and still and quiet under the watchful eye of the moon.

Imogen didn't like it, didn't trust the quiet. All too often, silence came before action, before an attack, before danger. "Clint?" she asked, just to break it. He hummed in reply. "What would you do? If you weren't a SHIELD agent? If you left right now?"

He paused, deep in thought. "I dunno," he replied. "Teach archery maybe. Or be a farmer."

"A farmer?"

"Yeah." He was nodding along now, growing more enthusiastic about the idea by the second. "With like, cows and chickens and stuff."

"Why?" Wrinkling her nose, she tried to imagine being a farmer. It wasn't an appealing idea to her – she'd never been a fan of animals, farm or otherwise.

Clint shrugged. "Nice and peaceful out in the country, miles from anywhere." A wicked grin dawned. "No crazy kids coming to kill me."

"Not a kid," she reminded him, but she smiled anyway.

"Yeah, just keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day I'll believe you."

"You're ridiculous."

He ignored her. "So _kid_," he said. "What would _you _do?"

Imogen froze. In truth, she hadn't ever really thought about it – and when she had, she'd never come up with an answer. Her knowledge of the world was stunted, much as she hated to admit it. "I don't know," she replied after a beat. "Go and study something, I guess? That's what people do, isn't it?" She laughed. "End up in jail probably."

Wordlessly, Clint stood and offered her a hand up, which she took. They walked back to the room in silence. There was a buzzing noise when they got back, coming from Clint's bag. Imogen had thought it was just weapons and questionably obtained cash, but now, as he rifled through its contents and produced her phone (which she'd been sure she'd lost), it became apparent that there was a whole lot more secreted away in there.

She forgot about the rest as soon as she saw the phone though. "Why do you have that?" she demanded, storming across the room to stand face-to-face with him.

Alarmed, his eyes widened, his first instinct to raise the phone above his head to where she couldn't reach it. "How does this thing even have battery still?" he asked, backing away from her and looking up at the screen.

"It's a Starkphone," she snapped, stalking after him. "They can run for a week between charges."

"Your brother's calling," Clint hit the wall with a grunt, eyes still turned upwards. "Why's he calling?" The buzzing stopped, the call unanswered. Clint's eyebrows shot up. "That's a lot of calls."

She stood in front of him, arms crossed. "Maybe you should answer him," she said impetuously. "See what he wants."

"No way." His eyes finally tore away from the phone above his head. "Phone call from the enemy? _Obviously_ a trap. Are you stupid?"

"I'm not stupid," she argued. "Give me my phone back."

"No." Before she could as much as blink, he whipped the phone down and into his pocket. "Stay. Away." He poked her hard twice in the shoulder, making her flinch away, rubbing her shoulder. Taking his chance, he slipped past her and collapsed on the bed, closing his eyes and feigning sleep.


	9. Chasing Birds

**9: Chasing Birds**

"She's not picking up."

"I know Murphy."

The techie tapped a few keys on his keyboard. "I can't get a fix on her if she doesn't pick up."

"I _know._" He pressed the call button again.

"How do we even know she still has her phone?"

"Barton has it," Will said. "Picked it up when he took her."

"Why?"

"I don't _know_ Murphy." His voice was long-suffering now. "Why does that crazy archer do anything?"

Murphy just gave him a look, and then turned back to his screen. The phone rang out.

From the front of the van came an impatient sigh. Keely's face appeared between the curtains that separated back from front, eyeing them both. "Do you have anything yet?" she asked. Murphy shook his head and she ran a hand through her short black hair. "I need a smoke," she declared, disappearing again.

"You're not supposed to do that in the field," Will called half-heartedly.

"Give me something to do and I'll stop," came her reply, just before she slammed the door closed. He didn't move; there was no real point in stopping her. After all, John wasn't supposed to be snoring loudly in the front seat either, and if he stopped Keely from smoking, he'd have to wake John up – and no one wanted that. John wasn't the sort of person you snuck up on if you valued your health and wellbeing.

He called Imogen again.

"How do you know she'll even pick up?" Murphy asked. "You're not exactly the number one person she's going to want to talk to right now."

"She'll pick up." His voice left no room for doubt. "I know my sister. She'll pick up."

"You sure sound confident about that."

Will shrugged. "People become predictable, once you know them well enough. Imogen works on the truth. A long as she knows she's been lied to, she'll give anything to know the real story."

"She used to be such a good kid." Murphy leant back in his chair, swinging from side to side. He'd met her once or twice, he recalled, when she'd been around to see Will or the team had been stationed at the same base as her. Then, he'd thought she was nice enough, if a little rough around the edges. And anyway, from what he'd heard, she had reason enough to be. It didn't really bother him all that much. Now she was a fugitive, an enemy of HYDRA. He was having a hard time reconciling that description with the small blonde he remembered.

Will laughed. "She was never a good kid," he corrected. "I kept her out of trouble/ Thought she'd stop being so pigheaded once she got into training, but…"

Murphy could see his thoughts written all over his face, and paused in his endless searching. "It's not your fault, you know," he told Will. "It was her choice to go and find Barton."

"Maybe you're right," the other man sighed. Nodding to himself, Murphy turned back to his computers.

The phone stopped mid-ring.

* * *

><p>Clint turned down the radio.<p>

Imogen glanced at him, slouched in the passenger seat inspecting the fletching of an arrow, his feet settled on the dash, and looked back to the road, trying to ignore the sudden quiet. "Why'd you join HYDRA?" he asked finally.

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. "Why'd you join SHIELD?" she shot back, automatically shifting to defensive.

In the corner of her eye, she could see him give her a strange look. There was a long pause, and then, "I don't know if you're being serious or not." His attention moved back to his arrows.

"I'm serious," she decided firmly.

He sighed. "I'll tell you if you'll tell me?"

"You first."

Another sigh, and then a shrug. The arrow in his hands rolled back and forth between his fingers. "I was working as an assassin; you know, hired to kill and all that. Made a name for myself." He held up the arrow and let out a humourless laugh, sobering quickly. "Pretty easy when you use a unique weapon. Anyway, I was camped out on a rooftop in the middle of the night somewhere in Brazil, waiting for this one drug lord to come into sight, when I see these guys in heavy combat gear lurking around. I'd been scoping this place out for days and I knew they weren't supposed to be there, so I get down off the roof and leg it. Thought I'd given them the slip, and then this one guy _in a _suit starts chasing me, and he's _good._ Kept following and following, and I couldn't shake him off."

"What'd you do?" she asked, when he descended into silence, staring at the arrow.

Clint smiled faintly, but there was a hollow, haunted look in his eyes now, a slight shake to his hands that she put down to a trick of the light. "He caught up to me when I turned into a dead end, and then tripped on a tree root and busted my ankle. There I am, limping around, and this guy in a suit appears and says, 'Clint Barton? I'd like to talk to you about conviction'."

"Conviction?" She frowned at the term.

Clint nodded. "Yeah, conviction. Coulson was pretty big on the idea."

"Sounds stupid to me."

He laughed. "Me too. Convinced me to join SHIELD though."

"So you joined because someone gave you a speech about loyalty?"

"I joined because it was better than just killing for money. Because it was a job that let me sleep at night."

"Until HYDRA came about," she added.

Clint nodded. "So?"

"So what?"

"Why'd you join HYDRA?"

"Because Will did," she said slowly. "And he joined because our parents filled him up with HYDRA propaganda before I was even born. He's eight years older than me, you know."

"They didn't do it to you?"

She waved him off casually. "Probably. I don't remember them."

"Do you remember them dying?"

She glanced at him sharply, then glued her eyes to the road. "What?" she asked, before remembering what she'd been saying to Will moments before Clint showed up in that street a few days ago. _I watched them die!_ He must have heard her then.

Clint was still looking at her, waiting; she could see him in the corner of her eye, however hard she tried not to. Imogen swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in her throat.

"Yeah," she admitted finally. "I remember that. I mean-" Reaching up, she pulled the neck of her shirt down low enough to reveal her collarbone, and the long, jagged scar she usually kept covered that ran above it. "-they left me enough of a reminder." She let the shirt go, covering it again. "I was five. They tried to slit my throat," she continued, just to fill the silence. "I got lucky."

"Sorry, kid." Clint fell silent.

A gas station came into view ahead, a tall sign loudly telling anyone who passed by about the newly opened McDonalds there. "You hungry?" he asked suddenly.

"Really?" she asked, not impressed.

"They have good coffee."

"You're ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous about coffee?"

"It's the middle of the day."

He sighed. "Just pull over."

She did as he said, then sat and waited while he refueled. "You want anything?" he asked through the window.

"No way," she replied, curling her lip. He shrugged and wandered off.

There was a faint buzzing noise coming from the back seat, only audible now that the engine was silent. Her phone again…and again, and again. Groaning, she tried to ignore it, but it was like a bug you couldn't quite pin down, making just enough noise to annoy you.

Four calls in and she was over it. Why had she made her own phone so annoying? Twisting around, she reached for Clint's bag and rummaged through it – _why _did he have so much stuff – almost cutting herself on a loose arrowhead as she retrieved the phone. The call rang out as she slumped back down in her seat, letting her unlock and scroll through her messages. They were all from Will, of course, the latest sent the night before.

_Imogen, call me back._

_I know you have your phone._

_Just talk to me?_

_Thought we were supposed to be family._

_After everything I've done for you, you can't even give me one call?_

_I should have-_

Another call came through, and without thinking about it she punched the reject button. "Damn it," she muttered to herself a moment later, when she realised that he'd now know she was paying attention. Her phone returned to the messages.

_I should have expected this from you._

_You've always been a lost cause._

That one hurt the most. Will had bailed her out of a lot of trouble over the years, but that was the first time he'd given up on her.

A new message came through, pushing the old ones away. _Hi Imogen._ And another. _We need to talk._

She hesitated, then tapped out a reply. _About what?_

_Mum and Dad. And you._

_And if I don't care anymore?_

_What about Item 548? I know you read the report._

She called him.

He answered on the first ring. "Hey Immy."

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"'You've always been a lost cause.' Really?"

She heard him sigh and felt a grim satisfaction at the sound. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it."

"Yeah, whatever. What do you want?"

"Why are you doing this?" He sounded pained.

She had an answer for him this time. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because HYDRA killed our parents and then sent me out to be killed too?"

"That mission was a mistake, Imogen. No one wanted you to die."

"Yeah? And what about Mum and Dad?"

"They were traitors. Mum tried to sabotage the Soldier program, was working on something that would have crippled HYDRA for good. Dad wanted out, wanted to sell everything he knew to the highest bidder."

"Good."

"Good? HYDRA is trying to build a better world, and its people like them that tear it all apart."

"HYDRA were going to kill millions of people. I've seen the news. You can't just kill people for standing up for what they believe in."

"You don't understand-"

"I do!" She smacked her fist into the seat, pushing down against the cushion.

"No you don't. You never have. And you never will." He was angry too now. "You're a puppet, a project, and you always will be."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she asked, gritting her teeth. Clint appeared outside the gas station, coffee in hand. She should hang up now, if she didn't want him to know, but she couldn't bring herself to, not without knowing just _why_ he was saying these things.

Will _laughed_. "See, I told you you'd want to know. I'm talking about-" A hand grabbed her wrist, pulling the phone away from her ear and then out of her grip entirely, cancelling the call.

"Call from the enemy. Trap," Clint said, his voice dark. "Didn't we talk about this?" She shrugged. "I'm driving, by the way. Get out."

Wordlessly, Imogen slid out of the driver's seat and rounded the car, climbing back in on the other side. Clint barely gave her time to shut the door before he drove off, going faster than was probably legally allowed (not that she was going to question it).

His quiet disapproval bothered her. Usually, she didn't care if other people thought badly of her, but when it was clear that Clint didn't approve? Well, _now _she cared. It annoyed her too – she didn't want to care what he thought. Why would she? It made no sense.

"Sorry," she muttered eventually, if only to put her own mind to rest.

Clint nodded, just once. "What did he say?" he asked.

"Something about our parents being traitors." She shrugged, as if it were no big deal.

"That's it?"

Imogen hesitated. "He said I was a puppet," she added finally. "And a lost cause."

Clint gave her a smile. "That's alright," he said. "I was both those things too."


End file.
